2012 Ormond Papers

ormond p a p e r s Tradition & D i s s e n t

Ormond Papers - tradition & dissent - Volume XXIX 2012

Š Ormond Papers Volume XXIX 2012 http://papers.ormond.unimelb.edu.au Printed and bound in Burwood Australia

by BPA Print Group Ormond College 49 College Crescent Parkville VIC 3052 Australia T: 613 9344 1100 F: 613 9344 1111 E: enquiries@ormond.unimelb.edu.au www.ormond.unimelb.edu.au ABN: 975 436 240 82

Contents

Editorial Acknowledgements Music Contributors Artworks

4 6 37 236 239

VIGNETTES Lucy Broughton Alexa Thompson & William Moisis Eva Deutscher

Land Justice

23

Garma Reflection The Lobotomist

27 31

ARTICLES Austin Van Groningen Sarah Martin Sarah Martin Ross Sundberg Nicholas Mills Caitlin Clifford Alexandra Dworjanyn Neville Norman Sophie Parr Laura Berthold Hilary Binks Michael Patterson Graham Priest Huw Hutchison Simon Pickering Alexa Thompson Hugh Utting A. Ghazi Ahamat Stephanie McMahon Martin Warren J. P. M. Sainty Brigid O’Farrell Rufus Black

Integration Imminent Jean McCaughey Ecclesia Reformata et Semper Reformanda The Dismissal Cutting the Gordian Knot Decisive or Docile?

Spinning Iraq Economic Controversies (Re-)Solved New Thinking on Human Trafficking Violence in Vain Reconceptualising ‘exposure’ A Personal Favourite Result about π A Prolegomenon to and Planning for the Future The Road to Modernisation in Indonesia Environment meets Economy Polygamy and Islam Gentrification Balancing the Present with the Future The Moral Code of DNA A Case for Same-Sex Marriage Lawrence, Sex and Art’s Ethical Mission Conrad, Eliot and ‘the courage to be’ Communities of Requirement

10 17 40 46 57 76 81 94 98 108 114 131 136 146 153 160 173 182 192 202 213 218 224

CREATIVE Chris Wallace-Crabbe Julian O’Donnell Gavrilo Grabovac Taylor Beaumont-Whitley Julian O’Donnell Joshua Castle Dylan Penniket Eliza Kluckow Bianca Went Gavrilo Grabovac

Rondo Entering the Whirlpool spute & Bureau On a Train Just Outside Montreux Melbourne August This Eastern Ash Heap Time Stands Still The House of Cards The Shopping List Ode to an Odeum

38 70 107 126 164 165 178 190 208 240

Editorial

D

uring Woodrow Wilson’s Presidency of Princeton University, a student threw a beer bottle into his office and was expelled. The story passed into history. The student who threw the bottle was Eugene O’Neill: future Nobel Laureate, one of the greatest American dramatists and in 1906, a student voice.

A century on and dissent comes in many kinds.

Beer bottles are still thrown, but protest has also found a home on twitter and facebook. In whatever form, it is a student ‘rite of passage’ to dissent against tradition and authority. We find it necessary to critique institutions, to challenge their legitimacy and to question their actions.

Great teachers understand this. Davis McCaughey’s essays and addresses on Tradition and Dissent speak to the heart of this student DNA. In his collected speeches, McCaughey identified Tradition and Dissent as central to his values and his professional life. In his time as Master of Ormond College, McCaughey was both influenced by the place of history and the need to maintain a questioning mind. His addresses inspired those who passed through the college and it was in his time that Ormond Papers was founded. In the first volume, he saw the Papers as a chance for anybody to have “the opportunity of meeting and listening to anybody else talk about his own subjects and interests.”

In 2012, we began with the intention of revisiting the founding vision of Davis McCaughey: Tradition and Dissent is the publication’s theme. We have placed ‘technical papers’ from various disciplines together and like in 1965, there is a ‘surprise’ when one turns from a piece on classics to a mathematical theorem.

As in 1965, contributors include graduates, undergraduates and alumni. Our referees include alumni who have developed expertise in various fields, some of whom contributed to earlier volumes. I would like to thank Leading Tutor, John Harris, whose advice guided the Editorial Committee. Other college staff also supported the Papers in ways too numerous to mention in detail.

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Editorial

We shall not cease from exploration, And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time.

—T.S. Eliot, Little Gidding.

Finally, Papers is a team effort. I would like to thank the Editorial Committee of Tycho Orton, Joshua Castle and Sam Hodgson who have given to Ormond Papers both time and dedication. Ormond Papers 2012 is a testament to the capacity of Ormond students to work together.

Any creative work requires an understanding of the literary traditions and precedents that proceed it. This idea, articulated by T. S. Eliot resonated with McCaughey. In editing this volume, I have found Little Gidding to be a key inspiration with its fundamental valuing of the past in understanding the present. We have sought to capture Eliot’s and McCaughey’s spirit by exploring and questioning the past and present, not for the sake of revolution, but rather for reflection. If we have at least partly succeeded in this, I am satisfied.

William Abbey

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People Academic Referees

Editorial Team Editor-in-Chief: William Abbey (OM 2012)

Professor Jeff Borland (OM 1984) Department of Economics, University of Melbourne

Editorial Committee: Joshua Castle (OM 2012) Sam Hodgson (OM 2012) Tycho Orton (OM 2012)

Doctor Dirk den Hartog (OM 1963) Resident Tutor in English, Ormond College

Editorial Committee Adviser: John Harris

Associate Professor Jane Freemantle Melbourne School of Population Health, University of Melbourne

Designers: Cameron Dunlop (OM 2012) Charles A. O. Shenton (OM 2011) Samuel Taylor (OM 2010)

Professor Billie Giles-Corti McCaughey Centre, Melbourne School of Population Health, University of Melbourne

Proofreaders: A. Ghazi Ahamat (OM 2008) Laura Berthold (OM 2010) Isabella Borshoff (OM 2012) Kate Daniel (OM 2012) Alexandra Dworjanyn (OM 2010) Leila Enright (OM 2012) Zara la Roche (OM 2011) Bronte Lourey (OM 2012) Eloise Kent (OM 2010) Brigid O’Farrell (OM 2012) Arthur Rothery (OM 2012) Jenni Rowbottom (OM 2012) Alexa Thompson (OM 2011) Austin Van Groningen (OM 2010) Veronica Volfneuk (OM 2012) Georgia Westbrook (OM 2012) Cover Design: Joel Paterson (OM 2012)

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People

Professor Lee Godden Faculty of Law, University of Melbourne John Harris Ormond College, University of Melbourne Professor Nick Haslam (OM 1983) Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, University of Melbourne Professor Barry Hughes Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Melbourne

Professor Adrian Little School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Melbourne Doctor Heather Lonsdale Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Melbourne Andre Louhanapessy Ormond College, University of Melbourne Professor Stuart Macintyre (OM 1965) Ernest Scott Professor of History, School of Historical and Philosophical Studies, University of Melbourne Doctor James Malycha MD St Vincent’s Hospital, Melbourne

Doctor Katharine McGregor School of Historical and Philosophical Studies, University of Melbourne Doctor Grace Moore School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne Associate Professor Howard Sankey School of Historical and Philosophical Studies, University of Melbourne Professor Loane Skene (OM 1968) Faculty of Law, Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences, University of Melbourne Professor Michael Webber Department of Resource Management and Geography, University of Melbourne

Professor Ian McDonald Department of Economics, University of Mebourne Associate Professor Derek McDougall (OM 1963) School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Melbourne

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“ How can we best contribute to peace, to progress, to stability in the Western Pacific and SouthEast Asia? �

Malcolm Fraser Whitlam Oration 2012

Integration Imminent Negotiating pitfalls on Australia’s path to Asian acceptance

Austin Van Groningen

The forces of globalisation in recent decades have drawn Australia and East Asia into an unprecedented economic relationship punctuated by both newly-forged agreements and substantial rifts of a geographical, political and cultural nature.

For Australia to remain competitive under this new regional paradigm, it must gain the trust and acceptance of the Asian states on which it now relies heavily for the fulfilment of its national interests, predominantly national security and economic prosperity. Some believe that Australia will never be fully accepted as part of Asia because of continuing domestic and regional obstacles. In responding to and critically assessing this claim that Australia will never be fully accepted as a part of Asia, a number of key terms need to first be defined to best direct discussion.

Firstly and most importantly, a workable definition for ‘Asia’ must be developed.

For the purpose of this analysis, ‘East Asia’ will represent the Australian geopolitical conception of the continent, and will hereafter be referred to simply as ‘Asia’.1 This definition has been established primarily because this is the East Asia most commonly invoked in Australian politics and academia, and thus that to which most attention on the subject has been devoted.2 Additionally, this definition has been used to frame discussion effectively, as investigations of Australian foreign policy attitudes and implications in regions of secondary economic and security implications are beyond the scope of this analysis. What is meant by Australia’s prospective incorporation as ‘part of Asia’, then, must be clarified. The phrase could imply geographical inclusion, allude to population demographics, or be expanded to the less concrete realms of politics and culture. Similarly, what ‘full acceptance’ denotes is open to interpretation. There is an implicit requisite of some consensus of recognition from other states, but whether that needs to be local, regional or unanimous among all Asian countries is unclear, as is the very premise that ‘acceptance’ comes only through Australia’s official recognition as part of East Asia. For the purpose of this paper, Australia’s geographical, political, and cultural status with Asia and the negotiation of associated domestic and regional obstacles in recent years will be examined. Australia’s inclusion in Asian summits, attendance at regional meetings, involvements with multilateral arrangements and participation in bilateral agreements with individual East Asian states will be used to gauge ‘acceptance’. The conclusion reached is that, despite considerable barriers of geography, politics and culture, Australia is gaining ever-greater acceptance within East Asia, but is still some time away from ‘full acceptance’ and will need to better

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negotiate political and cultural obstacles both domestically and regionally in order to obtain it. Given the number of developments cited, the statement that Asia will never come to completely embrace Australia as a constituent part will be shown to be unreasonable.

A Question of Continents Australia, by simple geographical definition, is its own continent. Located on a separate tectonic plate and partitioned off from all other landmasses by formidable sea barriers, the ‘island continent’ obstinately stands alone. Nevertheless, the physical proximity of Australia to Asia, made ever-closer by the rapid growth of the latter and ever-increasing economic interdependence between the two, has drawn many observers in Australia3 to the belief that their nation is a geographical satellite of the Asian continent, with which it must engage to survive.4 This acuity has not been fully reciprocated by Asian countries because of differences in views about the Asia-Pacific and Asia regional definitions.5 With the earlier establishment of a current geographical definition of Asia based on its conventional conception within Australian discourse, the assertion that Australia will never be fully accepted as a part of Asia seems self-evident.6 With literal barriers of vast distances, the statement appears reasonable when viewed solely from a geographical perspective, as tectonic plates move on a time scale beyond the scope of this analysis. However, this view does not take into account the effective compression of space brought about by globalisation, a phenomenon that renders strict geographical borders of ever-diminishing significance.7 Additionally, geography is but one criterion on which acceptance into Asia can be assessed, and pays no regards to less tangible but arguably far more telling variables assessed in this piece.

Australia and Asia in Politics Political acceptance, qualified by the establishment of bilateral agreements between states, involvement in regional summits and engagement with multilateral institutions, is a far more telling sign of assimilation into any given region. In a globalised world of ever-increasing multilateral associations, geographical restrictions have been mitigated by technological advances and ancient grievances superseded by the desire to trade profitably with all countries with which some political agreement can be found.8 For this reason, Australia’s level of acceptance into East Asia can largely be gauged by its political engagement with Asia’s constituent states.9 Of course, politics and political history can also be a significant barrier to cooperation and consensus, especially in instances of vast ideological differences. The primary domestic obstacles to acceptance have been Australia’s political system, its colonialimperial history and its present allegiances. While some Asian states also feature Western-style democracies and have strong US-alliances,10 Australia’s combination of strong Western ties, a British colonial history and a largely ‘Asia-illiterate’

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society pose diplomatic problems.11 This presents a major barricade in the path of Australia’s political acceptance by China, which will be investigated later. Another obstacle operating at the regional level in Southeast Asia is that of Australia’s interventionist approach to some foreign disputes, often articulated as a ‘forward defence strategy’ in terrorism and insurgency contexts.12 Indonesia was insulted by Australia’s move into East Timor in 1999, as the act was seen to be an imposition of Western political will on Southeast Asia.13 The approach had the effect of souring Australian-Indonesian relations and also resulted in accusations of imperialism from Asian countries, which arguably extended Australia’s exclusion from the East Asia summit for longer than would otherwise have been expected with an alternative approach to security at home and abroad.14 Such differences in attitudes and outlooks between Australia and Asia present considerable inhibitors to political acceptance and integration.

Despite significant barriers, necessity has remained the driving force behind cooperative policy agendas on both sides. Even though full acceptance politically has not yet occurred, as evidenced by Australia’s continuing exclusion from discussions such as the East Asia Free Trade Agreement (FTA) negotiations, globalisation has ushered in a new era of political engagement between East Asia and Australia.15 To overcome the aforementioned obstacles, inter-governmental cooperation in both the establishment and maintenance of a bilateral agreement or multilateral organisation must be undertaken. Former Prime Minister Paul Keating argues that such engagement is indicative of mutual political acceptance.16 In Australia’s case, the overwhelming stimulant of political engagement with Asia through institutionalism and agreements has been economic interdependence.17 A booming resources industry and dwindling manufacturing sector, in addition to the necessity in the globalised world to trade to best exploit comparative advantage, has led successive Australian governments to push for FTAs with major partners and increased engagement in regional institutions.18 In the case of Northeast Asia, Australia has opted primarily for bilateral trade agreements. Having substantively begun its economic engagement with Asia by exporting coal to allied Japan in 1955, Australia has bolstered its economic attachment to the region with the successive lowering of tariffs, culminating in the most recent round of FTA negotiations with Japan and China beginning in 2005.19 Consequently, Australia has seen its percentage of export products destined for Asia steadily rise from a nearly negligible level in 1955 to a mammoth 62% in 2010.20 A highly lucrative FTA with China has been in negotiation since 2005 and represents the latest in a long line of bilateral agreements which have established China as Australia’s largest trading partner in a remarkably short period of time.21 Such agreements were only reached by diplomacy and political cooperation, succeeding despite vast differences in governance ideology.22 These advances are indicative of increasing political alignment between the two countries and serve as an example of the growing acceptance of Australia by the Asian community as a worthy partner.

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Of course, these developments are in Australia’s best interests for the retention of valued trading partners.23 In Southeast Asia, multilateralism has proven to be the dominant force in Australia’s foreign policy strategy. Again, engagement and alignment is desirable, but in this case for slightly different reasons. Short to medium-term security, in addition to trade incentives, have strongly guided Australian political actions and Southeast Asian responses. This is particularly true on the issues of lowering trade barriers and combating terrorism.24 The history of Australia’s multilateral affiliation with the region dates back to the 1989 establishment of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC). Australia’s membership of the organisation, while not truly an example of Asian engagement, provided a platform for discussions with the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), which culminated in a free trade partnership between ASEAN, Australia and New Zealand in 2010.25 Another milestone was reached in 2010 when Australia was allowed to attend the biennial Asia-Europe meeting after a 1996 veto by Malaysia.26 Finally, inclusion in the inaugural East Asia Summit in 2005, despite initial discord and difficulty, has provided Australia with a voice in a forum that now includes all of East Asia and the United States of America. These summits have afforded Australia strong representation within the region. The considerable differences in political ideology and outlook between Australia and several major Asian countries have prevented Australia’s full admission into a politically and economically open Asian community and will take some time to resolve. However, developments on both bilateral and multilateral fronts with Asian states and associations have granted Australia a degree of acceptance as an Asian country, setting a trajectory towards political assimilation into the continent.

Bridging the Cultural Rift Perhaps an even bigger challenge for Australia in gaining the acceptance of present Asian states is the vast cultural divide that exists between the two. Differences in language, population demographics, socio-economic factors and conception of identity present seemingly insurmountable challenges to Australia’s hopes for acceptance into the region. Such a view has been advanced by Fitzgerald, who claims that ‘Asia-literacy’, defined as an awareness of Asian histories, languages, customs and philosophies, is essential for Australia’s continuing engagement with the region on all levels.27 A domestic obstacle faced by Australia in gaining cultural acceptance in East Asia is its failure to become “the Asia-literate society.”28 Australia is deemed to be woefully ill-equipped to tackle the challenges it faces in reconciling its Western values and demographic in an Eastern region.29 Accusations of cultural imperialism during the 1999 East Timorese intervention and in East Asia Summit membership respectively, were attributed to Asia-illiteracy as a cause of acute cultural disparity.30 Again, recent inclusion in multilateral institutions and the success of the bilateral negotiations cited previously represent Australian attempts

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to overcome this problem, acting as indicators of improvement in the absence of quantifiable Asia-literacy outcomes. On the foreign policy front, the shadow of White Australia still looms in the minds of observers throughout the region.31 Additionally, Australia’s strong alliance with the United States, embodied in the ANZUS Pact, has been a major hindrance to advances with China. The assertion that Australia will be ultimately forced to choose between its closest military ally and its most important trading partner has been advanced by academics in both countries.32 Again, only time will tell as to whether or not these policies continue to negatively affect acceptance in interstate arrangements, FTAs and multilateral institutions.

Impending Assimilation?

The notion that Australia can never be fully accepted as a part of East Asia because of domestic and foreign obstacles, both past and present, is fallacious. The task will not be easy of course, considering the difficulties encountered in attempting to engage with the region in recent decades, and a history tied closely to Western powers. However, despite problematic ideological clashes on immigration and interventionist policy with nearby neighbours, and a continuing lack of appropriate education and understanding of the history, politics, society and language of different Asian countries, Australia is taking steps towards recognition by Asian states as a legitimate member of the region. Mutual economic dependence appears to be the key factor in Australia’s recent inclusion in the East Asia Summit and, tellingly, the Asia-Europe meeting. These developments are indicative of Australia’s increasing political engagement with the region, even though China remains stoic in its disapproval of the continuation of the ANZUS Pact. Cultural acceptance is far more difficult to quantify, and although a lack of Asia-literacy has hampered past relations, Australia’s regional engagement continues. In order to attain full assimilation within the Asian region, further advancements in the area of Asia-literacy, institutional engagement and FTAs must be secured. Indeed, the prospect of widespread tolerance of Australia as an equal within Asia seems distant. Ultimately, however, the view that Australia will never be fully accepted as Asian is antiquated and fails to take into account the ever increasing contact, dependence and cultural awareness of the two parties.

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endnotes 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

East Asia, ‘Asia’ for the purpose of this essay, includes Northeast Asia, comprising China, the Korean peninsula and Japan, and Southeast Asia, composed of nations situated between China and Australia with India and Papua New Guinea acting as western and eastern borders respectively.

N Knight, Thinking about Asia, (Hindmarsh: Crawford House, 2000), 6-8.

Observers include all Australian governments since 1991.

S Fitzgerald, Is Australia an Asian Country?, (St Leonards: Allen and Unwin, 1997), 52.

Fitzgerald, Is Australia an Asian Country?, 8-9.

Knight, Thinking about Asia, 6-8.

Doreen Massey, ‘A global sense of place,’ Space, place and gender, (Cambridge: Polity press, 1994), 146-156.

Massey, ‘A global sense of place,’ 146-156.

Paul Keating, Engagement: Australia Faces the Asia-Pacific, (Sydney: Macmillan, 2000), 32-33.

South Korea and Japan are notable examples of Asian

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

21.

22.

democracies with US-sympathies.

Fitzgerald, Is Australia an Asian Country?, 94.

J Kitchin, The Defence of Australia 1987, (Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service, 1987).

S Pietsch, ‘Australian imperialism and East Timor,’ Marxist Interventions 2, (2010).

Pietsch, ‘Australian imperialism and East Timor,’ 2010.

Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Australia’s Trade with East Asia 2010, (Canberra: DFAT, 2011).

Keating, Engagement, 21.

Knight, Thinking about Asia, 7.

DFAT, Australia’s Trade with East Asia 2010.

M Wolf, Why Globalisation Works, (Yale: Yale University Press, 2004).

‘Australia’s Trade Agreements,’ DFAT, 2012a, accessed April 13 2012, http:// www.dfat.gov.au/fta/index. html.

DFAT, Australia’s Trade with East Asia 2010.

Ibid.

B Baxter, ‘The Rise of China and the Fall of Human Rights’, The Sydney Globalist,

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23.

24.

25.

26.

27.

28.

29.

30.

31.

32.

March, 2011, accessed April 14, 2011, http://thesydneyglobalist.org/archives/1565.

Fitzgerald, Is Australia an Asian Country?, 2000.

D McDougall, Australian Foreign Relations: Contemporary Perspectives, (South Melbourne: Longman, 1998), 153-56.

‘Australia-New ZealandASEAN Free Trade Area’, DFAT, 2012b, accessed April 13 2012, http://www.dfat.gov. au/fta/aanzfta/index.html.

Fitzgerald, Is Australia an Asian Country?, 1.

Ibid, 94.

Ibid, 94.

Ibid.

Pietsch, ‘Australian imperialism and East Timor’.

‘Mahatnir blasts Australia over summit,’ AAP, December 7 2005, accessed April 14 2012, http://news.ninemsn. com.au/article.aspx?id=76332.

Fitzgerald, Is Australia an Asian Country?, 177.

McDougall, Australian Foreign Relations, 60.

15

Jean McCaughey

Excerpts from the life of Jean McCaughey 1917-2012 Sarah Martin

It has often been said that Davis McCaughey, who died in 2005, would not have made such a significant impact on Australian life in the second half of last century without the support of Jean, his wife of sixty-five years. Many people have commented on the fact that whenever they thought of Davis, they thought of Jean as well, and that they were an inseparable couple who were ‘brilliant together’. While undoubtedly true, this tends to ignore the contributions that Jean made in her own right to the fabric of Victorian life during the same period.

It looked as though she was destined to fulfil her ambition as a doctor with special interests in the health and well-being of the less privileged. But a chance encounter changed the direction of her life. In 1937 she was a reluctant starter at a meeting of the university’s Student Christian Movement (SCM). But when she walked into the hall and saw Davis McCaughey on the platform preparing to address the audience, she fell in love, immediately and completely. They struck up a friendship, that began with their shared interest in the SCM, and turned into a mutual love that would last a lifetime.

In 1940 Jean was about to start her final year of medicine, and Davis was due to leave for Edinburgh for the second year of his theology degree. Despite advice from everyone, including her future mother in law, who had also not finished her medical degree because of marriage, Jean and Davis decided that they must marry, and go together to Edinburgh. The War had brought uncertainty about the future, which no doubt contributed to their urgency. Jean was always firm that she did not regret her lost career, and that marrying Davis and bringing up her large family was the best decision she ever made. But her subsequent activities reveal an energy and acuity that perhaps speaks of a character that was not completely fulfilled within those confines.

It is possible to understand, although not to verify, how Jean’s mental sharpness and her enthusiastic and strongly held political desire for social justice for the underprivileged, was complementary to Davis’s own less obvious but nevertheless deeply held political approach. What is certain is that from the start they were intellectual equals. Her constructive criticism of his sermons and other writings was from their early days an important aspect of their relationship, and Davis drew enormous confidence and inspiration from her acute and outspoken views, and her

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natural and unaffected warmth towards the people they met. They were also united by their strong Christian faith, and their interest in the SCM’s efforts to develop an ecumenical position.

To say that the relationship between Davis and Jean was always sunny and smooth is to miss the point of the chemistry and the often fiery exchanges that bound them together in a lasting and loving partnership. From the beginning, Davis’ career path was never clear cut, but followed a pattern that required hours of time alone reading and writing, and countless meetings. Jean always provided the warm centre of hospitality and good meals for their many visitors, and the spirited and intellectual conversation around the dining table in which Jean was always a forceful contributor would reap significant benefits for Davis’ work in the relationships that were forged in Britain and in Australia. But numerous meetings and conferences away from home and often overseas meant that Jean took on the major burden of parenting, and there were times when her patience was stretched.

Their decision to come to Australia in 1953 was a joint one. They were both flexible, and curious about new ideas and new places, and well prepared to adventure and face the challenge of a new life together in a distant land. For Jean there was the additional attraction that Davis, in a teaching role on the campus where they were to live, would be home most of the time, giving a greater consistency to their family life and assurance of his active presence. Although this was true initially, once he became immersed in the merging of the Congregational, Methodist and Presbyterian Churches into The Uniting Church in Australia, and after he became Master of Ormond College, and also embroiled in the affairs of three different universities, he was once again a busy man with many irons in the fire. Jean’s presence as the stable centre of their married familial life would become even more important.

People seemed to take for granted that Jean could do everything, and she did. As her mothering role became less demanding, she contributed more and more to the community around her, becoming involved in the life of College Church on Royal Parade opposite Ormond College. She was soon in demand as an eloquent speaker to other church groups, usually on the topics of marriage and family life in the context of Christian faith. She also began to work one day a week with the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA), training young women in leadership, and was invited in 1957 to take up a position on that organisation’s national executive. As well, she could not help becoming involved in the lives of the people around her because of her empathy and compassion. People talked about their problems with her and she dispensed helpful, usually pragmatic and often quite bracing advice.

1959 and 1960 were significant years in Jean’s life. With Davis away on sabbatical in Europe, she took sole responsibility for family matters. She also took on a

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pivotal role in the spirited negotiations that Davis was conducting from afar with the Presbyterian Church and the Ormond College Council regarding the use of alcohol in the College and the plans for new buildings, and her tact combined with her ability to be outspoken when necessary helped promote satisfactory outcomes.

It is likely that these experiences gave her confidence and authority in the public arena, although she was greatly surprised when in 1963 several younger members of the Australian Student Christian Movement (ASCM) asked her to take on the role as Acting General Secretary. They believed she could help the staff become a united team and restrain some of the more rebellious elements from taking a divergent path. The work gave her an outlet, and she thrived in the atmosphere outside the home. Her desire to see greater opportunities for women saw her, with Alice Paton, the wife of the Vice-Chancellor of the University, take up the cause for the establishment of a new women’s college, St Hilda’s, to be situated between Ormond and Queen’s Colleges. As a member of the St Hilda’s College Council she took a positive role in overseeing its establishment and in the appointment of its first principal. She later served as that Council’s chair from 1972-1976. These jobs were of course peripheral to her major support role for Davis as Master of Ormond College and throughout the long years of negotiations that culminated in the birth of the new Church.

As the Master’s wife and in her unofficial role as confidante for members of the Ormond community and the Theological Hall she was a well-known and greatly loved figure around the campus. It was often said that if you couldn’t get through to Davis on a particular point it was always worth having a quiet chat with Jean.

Those who sought her out knew they could always count on a sympathetic ear and refreshment at the Master’s Lodge. They knew, too, that they would get a frank assessment of their problems and possibly unpalatable but effective advice. Jean also relished the interaction with the more politically active students who were engaging with issues of social justice in and outside the university, and with anti Vietnam War protests, and she was a willing collaborator when it came to hiding draft resisters from the police. Her social activism, which had been dormant for some time, began to assert itself in the 1960s when student revolution and a changing world order came to the fore. But she was, with Davis, dismayed at the erosion that happened in the 1960s and continued thereafter, of religious faith as the cornerstone of society.

In 1966, the year of Davis’s second sabbatical, Jean’s life entered another phase.

They decided to manage things differently by taking the two youngest children with them to Cambridge for the year. With not much to do, enrolling in a fine arts course seemed like a good idea to Jean. But at the last minute, while in the queue to register, she was persuaded by her daughters to take a computer course instead.

This first course led to another and on her return to Australia, she found she was one of a very small group of people with these skills. Her first job, helping out with computer programming at the Institute of Applied Economic Research might

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have come about because its founder, Professor Ronald Henderson, was a personal friend, but she quickly assumed the position of Research Assistant, and later Research Fellow, which she held for ten years. This role combined her passionate concern for people and for social justice with theoretical analysis and practical action for social change.

Thus began a period of life for Jean that saw her carve out a role for herself in the area of community service, and become a recognised authority on social justice issues, all the more surprising, since she achieved this with the minimum amount of fuss, attending meetings and carrying out interviews around Melbourne, and writing at the breakfast table in the Lodge at Ormond College almost unbeknownst to her family and friends. She contributed the first chapter of Migrants and Poverty, and wrote two chapters of People in Poverty, an influential study that was published in 1969. Because of her ability to communicate effectively and her engaging personality, she became the spokesman on this issue, whose views on the study were sought by the press, and she joined the team that presented the results of the Poverty Inquiry to the federal government in Canberra. It led to follow up work in the area, and she went on to co-author the very successful Who Cares? Family problems, community links and helping services, a report on family needs and welfare services that was published in 1977.

Jean’s service to the Royal Melbourne Hospital began in 1971 when she was appointed to the Board of Management. From 1977 to 1979 she worked with the Victorian Government Social Welfare Department’s Urban Advisory Committee for Family and Community Services Programme. During this time she was also a part-time staff member of the Uniting Church Community Services Advisory Unit, and Victorian President of the YWCA. All of this work happened almost as an aside to the major role she played at Ormond College in her own right as the Master’s wife, and as support for her husband. That he was proud of her achievements is very clear in the letters he wrote to friends and family at the time. They were both politically minded and believed that it was through the political arm that change could be effected. Jean’s dedication to causes of social injustice, and belief that governments could do more, meant that they were united in there preparedness to make a stand on issues which they considered important, even when those views were unpopular.

In 1980 The Australian Institute of Family Studies (the Institute), an Australian Government statutory agency in the portfolio of the Prime Minister and Cabinet was established. Jean’s services were requested and she undertook a number of studies under the Institute’s auspices. In 1982, at the height of her research she addressed a conference with the statement: “The pathways to homelessness are easy to identify but the forces that carry families along the downward spiral are hard to change or resist. Nevertheless it was encouraging to discover that many of these families had considerable strengths in the face of adversity.” This blend of admi-

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ration and compassion for people struggling in difficult circumstances, that was underscored by an unspoken optimism that things could be done to improve the situation, was a constant theme in her writing.

In 1986, Davis was invited to become Governor of Victoria. Their initial hesitation was very real, and Jean felt acutely that they were sacrificing the chance to retire and enjoy some well-earned rest and time together. She hoped that the Government would find someone else more suitable. This didn’t happen, and once they had decided to take it on, they both plunged into it with characteristic enthusiasm.

They knew that the role was essentially an ambassadorial one, and that their duty was to reach as many people in the community as possible, through a variety of approaches, one of which was hosting dinners and lunches at Government House and speaking at numerous functions throughout Victoria.

Jean certainly made her individual mark as the Governor’s wife, and John Cain always claimed that in appointing Davis as Governor he had got two for the price of one. It was a role that in fact suited Jean very well, and she took on patronage of over a hundred different societies, which she chose because they were causes dear to her heart or because she felt they could do with the support that she could give.

She became impatient at times when she felt more could be done to express gubernatorial displeasure at the poor behaviour of politicians, but, persuaded by Davis and Charles Curwen, Head of the Office of the Governor, that this was not the job of the governor, she found an outlet for what she considered to be inaction by ‘stomping off’ to make jam in the kitchen. This was greatly appreciated by kitchen staff, and further helped break down barriers within the organisation.

Just after Davis’ inauguration as governor, Jean and Davis hosted a visit by the Queen and Prince Phillip. Jean remembered confiding to the Queen that she was worried as to how to manage the role, and the Queen’s reply was to do exactly as she was doing, which was reassuring. In any case she and Davis had believed that they could do it no other way, that they would just have to be themselves as governor and governor’s wife.

As society became increasingly materialistic in the 1980s and 1990s, Jean became more critical of the aggressiveness that was surfacing in the general community and of the approach of politicians who were finding it easy to ignore the needs of marginalised groups with no voting power. When they retired from Government House in 1992, Jean continued to fight for the things she believed in, the rights of the dispossessed and the disadvantaged, particularly in the area of housing for the homeless.

In the 1990s, Jean was a vocal member in the community, speaking out on issues that concerned her. She joined with others who expressed concern at the tendering out of work normally conducted by the Auditor-General’s department. As well,

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she and Davis both spoke out strongly against the unequal provision of educational facilities, and encouraged support of the State educational system at every opportunity. In 1997, Davis and Jean were both saddened by the death of their close personal friend, and her employer, Ronald Henderson.

Jean continued to play an active role in areas of particular interest to her well into the early years of this century. But in these latter years she revelled in time spent away from the public spotlight. For her, all that she had been able to do in the community was less noteworthy than her joy and pride in her children’s successes and happiness, and she always said that she felt her family was her greatest achievement. She and Davis, after their retirement from Government House, were able to take things much more easily, probably for the first time in their lives, with leisure to pursue their own interests at a much gentler pace, and enjoy gatherings of family and friends. A shadow over their last years together was Davis’s failing health, but Jean, in her indefatigable way, continued to take primary responsibility for his care, despite her own less than robust health. That Davis died at home surrounded by his family was largely due to her insistence that she could cope, and the support of the rest of the family, particularly Mary and Brigid, who made it possible.

She will be remembered for her contribution to community, and above all for that penetrating gaze that combined both a kindness and empathic interest with a sharpness and a clarity that cut through waffle and pomposity to the heart of the matter.

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Sarah Martin

Land Justice for Indigenous Australians in a post-Mabo era Lucy Broughton Paul Keating’s Redfern speech in 1992 established that achieving justice for Indigenous Australians lied in recognizing Indigenous land rights and ownership within the existing legal system.1 By scrutinizing the structure that underpins these rights and potential for land ownership, this report aims to analyse the limits of the Australian legal system in achieving land rights for Aboriginal societies.

Terra nullius Terra nullius is a Latin term meaning that the “land belongs to no one.” The doctrine of terra nullius was first legally established in 1824 as a result of Cooper v Stuart, where Lord Watson claimed that Australia, at the time of colonization, was “practically unoccupied, without settled inhabitants or settled law.”2 Thus, the fundamental assumption of this doctrine is that Indigenous people did not have ‘ownership’ of the land now called Australia. This notion is based on three primary assumptions: Indigenous as primitive: Firstly, Indigenous people were believed to be ‘primitive’. The discourses of social

Darwinism justified mentalities which regarded Indigenous people as genetically inferior to Europeans and thus ‘backward’. This rationalized the colonization of Indigenous territories.3 ‘Apparent’ lack of legislative framework: Secondly, due to this inferiority, it was inferred that the ‘substandard’ Indigenous people were thus incapable of forming a legitimate state. In Regina v Murrell it was established that Indigenous communities had no sovereignty because they did not possess “a form of government and laws, as to be entitled to be recognized as a sovereign state.”4 Furthermore, the British judged ‘Government’ by their own standards, defining a sovereign state as a political society which possessed “an institutionalized legal system, institutionalized judiciary, legislature and executive.”

Ultimately, the natural system of selfgovernment of Indigenous communities was rejected as illegitimate.

In spite of this, it has been found in Amerindian societies that Indigenous communities often possessed similar institutions to that of European socie-

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“ Any challenge of terra nullius threatens the very basis of our legal system “

ties including a “decision-making body, a consensus based decision-making procedure, and a system of customary laws and kinship relations.”5 It has been argued that this form of government is as “lawful and true as any Governments in the world.”6 Despite all the evidence to the contrary, the British refused to recognize Indigenous systems of government and thus sovereignty.

‘Working’ the land of the state: Thirdly, it appeared as though the Indigenous people did not ‘work’ the land of the state. As Irene Watson wrote: “the idea of land being empty is connected with the idea of Europe as progressive, and non-Europe as being backwards.”7 It was argued that Indigenous communities did not work the land in a substantially ‘Western’ way.

John Locke, in his Theory of Property, established the notion of appropriating land. This theory was based on the following three grounds: we own our own person, we own the labour of our bodies, and thus by mixing this labour with the unowned earth (assuming that God gave man the earth in common), we come to own it.8 This ideology was reproduced in Justice Burton’s judgment in Regina v Murrell in which he established the notion that Indigenous people “had not appropriated the territory” and therefore could not “become the possessors of this territory.”9

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Analysis of terra nullius Let us now examine the legal framework, which upheld terra nullius, and allowed the British to colonize Australia. Under British law, right of occupancy in distant countries can be claimed by either: finding that the land is “deserted and uncultivated,” or when the land was “cultivated” the lands have been gained by conquest or ceded to by treaties.10 In Australia, the British claimed the former, thus terra nullius.

As a result, Australia became a part of the Crown’s dominions. Thus, the law of England, so far as applicable to colonial conditions, became the law of Australia. By English law, the Crown became the “universal and absolute beneficial owner of all land” and thus acquired radical title.11 As a result of this, the Crown also acquired sovereignty in Australia, meaning the British possessed the ability to make laws for Australian land. Therefore any challenge of British sovereignty or terra nullius threatens the very basis of our legal system, as was seen in the Mabo case.

The Mabo Case The landmark constitutional case: Mabo v Queensland was brought to court in 1982, by Torres Strait Islander Eddie Koiki Sambo (he later changed his surname to Mabo), who submitted a Native Title claim for the Mer area in the Murray Islands. In 1992, after years

Lucy Broughton

“ Ut alit magnistem et, ommolendandi restrum, enderep ratiis eos et “

of court proceedings it was decided that Mabo, and the Meriam people had rights to their lands in accordance with their own laws, customs and traditions - and the common law recognized these rights.12 Thus the High Court, to some extent, overturned the application of terra nullius and recognized that “the Meriam people are entitled as against the whole world to possession, occupation, use and employment of the lands of the Murray Islands.”13 Despite this positive rejection of the concept of terra nullius, the recognition of the findings in the Mabo case was particularly limiting in relation to two issues. Firstly, the case did not address the question of whether sovereignty in Australia was lawfully acquired.

Secondly, the Mabo decision did not establish a basis for full recognition of Indigenous land rights for communities. The court declared that it did not have the power to “question whether a territory has been [justly] acquired by the Crown.”14 The court stated that questioning the premise of terra nullius in the pursuit of “justice and human rights” would “fracture the skeleton of principle which gives the body of our law its shape and internal consistency.”15 Similarly, Watson argues that “the real death of terra nullius would have dismantled the Australian legal system.”16 The court stated “recognition can only be

afforded to those rights and interests if they are not inconsistent with the basic doctrines of common law.”17 This reveals the fragility of Native Title. In all cases “it is subject to the sovereign’s right to deal with the land in a manner which extinguishes it.”18 In this sense, Native Title is incorporated within the European legal system as opposed to any greater practical implementation, because this would threaten the basis of British sovereignty in Australia.

Ultimately, the court did not question the acquisition of sovereignty and thus did not establish full recognition for Indigenous communities.

An Alternative Model of Land Rights In light of the current paradigm regarding land rights within Australia, I advocate for an alternative model wherein discourse is used as a way of achieving land justice. Discourse, as defined by Michel Foucault is a “way of constituting knowledge.”19 Foucault also states that discourses are intrinsically powerful: “power is exercised within discourses in the ways in which they constitute and govern individual subjects.”20 Thus, discourses create belief systems which then gain power and support, as more people regard the views of this system as fundamental ‘truths’.21 Lockean property discourse is an example of this concept. This set of beliefs about property gained more support as people accepted Lockean principles as ‘truths’.

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In response to this discourse, these ideals were legitimised in legislation and the legal system. I would suggest that a similar technique can be used to promote justice for Indigenous Australians.

However, considering the restrictive nature of our legal system, a discursive movement is a more reasonable and just approach to achieving justice for Indigenous communities.

By commencing a dialogue about land injustices, this belief system can then gain support to the extent that it fosters ideals which precipitate change in the legal system. In theory, while this model for discourse as a means of social change is an effective one, we must not disregard the challenge of the implementation of Foucault’s largely practical theories. Furthermore, let us not ignore the difficulty in beginning and maintaining a discourse about Indigenous land injustices in mainstream society.

In conclusion, the doctrine of terra nullius justified the colonisation of Australia, and thus is embedded in our legal system. The Mabo case illustrated the difficulty in questioning this system, and thus the limitations of Native Title as a whole. This suggests that an alternative discursive model could potentially be a more effective and judicious approach in achieving land justice for Indigenous Australians compared to the current legislative models.

endnotes 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

26

Paul Keating, ‘Speech by the Honorable Prime minister, PJ Keating MP, Australian Launch of the International Year for the World’s Indigenous People,’ Aboriginal Law Bulletin 3, no. 61, (1993): 4.

Mabo v Queensland, 1992, retrieved from http://www. austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/HCA/1992/23.html, 52.

Irene Watson, ‘Indigenous Peoples Law-Ways: Survival Against the Colonial State,’ Feminist Law Journal 8, (1997), 46.

Henry Reynolds, Aboriginal Sovereignty, (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1996), 40.

James Tully, An Approach to Political Philosophy: Locke in Contexts, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 153.

Ibid, 153.

Watson, ‘Indigenous Peoples Law-Ways,’ 46.

Locke, Two Treaties of Government, (Dent: London, 1984), 137.

Reynolds, Aboriginal Sovereignty, 46.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

21.

Blackstone, Commentaries on the Law of England, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1765), 106.

Ibid, 107.

Larissa Behrendt, Chris Cunneen, and Terri Libesman, Indigenous Legal Relations in Australia, (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2008), 189.

Mabo v. Queensland, 51.

Ibid, 28.

Ibid, 29.

Watson, ‘Indigenous Peoples Law-Ways,’ 48).

Mabo v. Queensland, 45.

Ibid, 47.

Jenny Pinkus, Foucault, accessed September 16, 2011, http://www.massey.ac.nz/~alock/theory/foucault.htm.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Lucy Broughton

Complexity & Perceptions working towards Indigenous futures (?)

Alexa Thompson & William Moisis The Garma Festival is a two-day event; a simultaneous celebration of Indigenous culture, and an important forum for dialogue and community consultation on Indigenous issues.

One month on, and my thoughts are still reeling from our trip to the Northern Territory in early September 2012. It is still impossible to draw together a single, coherent narrative of what I learnt; the combined experience of The Garma Festival and of the Bawaka area of North East Arhnem Land was challenging and thought provoking, yet it raised far more questions than answers. In the space of a week we glimpsed two seemingly different worlds within the very limited locale of East Arnhem Land. I am still trying to reconcile these two contrasting experiences of the same place. While I can offer no golden ticket to reconciliation to serve as a rousing call to action, I can attest that my experience was profound and compelling. Yes, our trip raised many questions, but it simultaneously provided me with a sense of optimism, and a determination to spread my interest in Indigenous culture to

whomever I can reach.

Before I left the cloistered, academic comfort of Melbourne University, I understood that the issues which indigenous communities face are complex. Yet, I was equally certain that these complex issues had a relatively simple solution. Community consultation and local decisionmaking surely lead to policies that suit regional needs and foster a sense of mutual respect. Moreover, they give Indigenous peoples a sense of ownership over their programmes, which they thus have an incentive to see succeed.

A simple answer. Unfortunately, also na誰ve.

As a result of our trip, I have come away with a more nuanced perspective regarding some of the challenges which many Indigenous Australians face.

Despite our intensive experience, it seems that the views we encountered were only the tip of the iceberg. It seems obvious that there would be differing opinions between regions, especially when discussing the best

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means for economic development of communities. But I had never considered that issues are contested even within clans and families. I found myself questioning: How are we supposed to reconcile these differences justly, as we have promised to do?

How are we supposed to fairly consider all points of view, when we only heed those with the best English skills, who speak up first?

How do we get the perspective of young people, while maintaining the respect for elders that is central to Aboriginal culture?

The best illustration of this complexity comes from a simple anecdote about the Garma Festival. The Garma Festival is a two-day event; a simultaneous celebration of indigenous culture, and an important forum for dialogue and community consultation on indigenous issues. The event in 2012 was far more intimate than in previous years, allowing for real discussion to take place between the key speakers, community elders and conference attendees.

This year, the conference theme was “Australia’s Resources Boom: A stepping stone to an indigenous future.”

Later we discovered that the subtitle was originally intended to finish with a question mark: “a stepping stone to

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an indigenous future?” This simple punctuation difference creates two very different conversations, both of which are valid, and both of which operate parallel to each other in remote indigenous communities.

The first key conversation which we had was regarding the differing views regarding mining, which is often considered both inevitable and beneficial. This was the perspective which we experienced at Garma. It was heartening to hear of the progress that has been made in the past forty years regarding consideration of Aboriginal land rights to mining sites, and of the promising opportunities for current and future employment. Unsurprisingly, for speakers such as Mitch Hooke, CEO of the Minerals Council of Australia, and representatives from Pacific Aluminium, Xstrata and Fortescue, as well as politicians including Federal Senator Nigel Scullion and Chief Minister for the Northern Territory Terry Mills: economic development is the key to achieving reconciliation targets, and mining is the silver bullet. The case was made that mining allows for a stable culture of employment, saving, and community development, that enables regions to develop economically. However, put the question mark back in regarding indigenous futures, and a lingering concern remains: is sheer economic growth a wholly appropriate paradigm

Alexa Thompson & William Moisis

to evaluate wellbeing, especially considering the importance of ancient cultural practices? Even with mining, it can be difficult to see the longterm benefits to entire communities, especially those not endowed with natural resources.

The persistent presence of that question mark grew more apparent as we moved on to Bawaka, a pristine, idyllic Aboriginal homeland. The fact that it had once been a potential mining site highlighted the tension that still exists between the economic benefits of mining, and its potential for destruction. For some, mining is sacrilegious, as the land represents one’s very culture and identity. Staring out at the pristine beauty of the ocean from the Bawaka homeland, it is easy to see why. In contrast with the mining industry, the tourism business operated by our host, Timmy, and his family at Bawaka, encouraged this small community to preserve and actively share their experience. Tourism allows for economic development within a community, while retaining a strong connection to land and culture. The success of the Bawaka enterprise highlighted the worth of exploring alternative means to development in remote communities.

As a wise young indigenous man on the trip said, the best way of keeping something is by sharing it around.

During our stay at Bawaka, we learnt the basics of the local language, went bush to find natural medicines, chipped oysters straight off the rocks at our swimming spot, and danced and talked around the campfire at night. It was incredibly special to feel welcomed into a home, and to hear Timmy, an elder of the Gumatj clan who was our primary teacher, speak to his granddaughter Gracie, nine, in their language, and watch her thrive in her traditional culture. In this context, it appears that there are aspects to community and identity far more important than sheer economic growth.

I was deeply influenced by the Garma Festival and our stay at Bawaka Homeland. Without both of these experiences, I doubt I would have a full sense of the complexity and sensitivity of the issues that indigenous communities face. My mind continues to dwell on the reality of two parallel conversations. Both are valid, and both have different obstacles and different answers.

It is important too, to reflect on how incredibly privileged we were for our experiences on this trip. Whatever the eventual outcome, the first step of coming to a resolution on any challenge is a serious attempt at understanding, which has been sadly lacking in approaches to indigenous policy for generations. Through what I have

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“ How do we get the perspective of young people, while maintaining the respect for elders that is central to Aboriginal culture? “

learnt, the almost tormenting question of ‘where to now?’ lingers in my mind. I am realistic about the serious challenges our generation will face in working towards reconciliation and ‘closing the gap’ between Indigenous and nonIndigenous Australians. But I have come away from this trip profoundly optimistic that cultural differences can be understood, stereotypes can be eliminated, and an equal opportunity to pursue one’s hopes and ambitions will be available to all, regardless of race or circumstance.

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Alexa Thompson & William Moisis

“The Lobotomist” a critical review

Eva Deutscher The scene is set in the 1920s; the state of mental hospitals in the United States is in decline. These institutions have become “dumping grounds”1 for people society wanted to forget. Into this picture comes a young physician, Walter Freeman, eager to do something about the institutions in crisis, and fuelled by the conviction that he was born to medical greatness. He sought to solve the big problems of psychiatry, and to do so fast. His cure: Prefrontal Leucotomy, a form of transorbital lobotomy.

A procedure which included a surgeon, often Freeman, driving an ice-pick behind the patient’s eyelid and severing a section of the brain. The procedure often had disastrous consequences, such as the severe mental and physical disability which Rosemary Kennedy, sister of John F Kennedy, suffered after the operation. The largely unregulated procedure meant that Freeman’s lobotomies were performed on thousands, who were under the impression that it was a legitimate medical operation. We see through the rise and fall of lobotomy, how the influence of one man can lead science, medicine and indeed the free press to deviate so far from the correct path, with thousands permanently

affected as a consequence.

One such medium that presents Freeman’s story is the historical documentary series American Experience. Writer and co-director Barack Goodman explores this dark chapter in medical history, and we are shown how a wellintentioned, but egotistical physician earned his infamy by developing and championing the practice of lobotomy as a much needed solution to alleviate the suffering of mentally ill who were overwhelming hospitals during the 1930-40’s. The programme attempts to describe Freeman in an objective manner by the use of differing opinions of experts, family members, patients and historians to help us piece together this complex man. From the documentary we gain an insight into his motivations: a combination of the desire to help, and intense ambition as he strives to make his mark in medicine. Furthermore, “The Lobotomist” discusses many of the environmental factors which contributed to the introduction and rapid initial uptake of this procedure. However, many questions remain unanswered.

Consequently, moral judgments that

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“ A procedure which included ... driving an ice-pick behind the patients eyelid and severing a section of the brain. “

the documentary encourages viewers to make on Freeman, through the shocking portrayal and use of persuasive techniques, are perhaps unjustified. At the conclusion of the documentary, the audience is left dangling, missing the opportunity to draw valuable lessons from history and describe the progress that has been made since then, in the field of psychiatry.

he understood the necessity of securing strong public support, as he faced stiff opposition from the medical profession.5 This leads the audience to ask, in understanding that this procedure was radical and controversial, whether he pursued this avenue so fervently because of his desire to treat those in need or because he was driven by his ambition to be immortalised in history.

Critique

With its use of these techniques, the film suffers from ‘presentism’, making the audience evaluate past events and people with present-day values and mindsets.6 It would have strengthened the documentary’s authority had these modern day biases been acknowledged and more thoroughly explored. In addition, the documentary could be made more objective and factual had the script been written so as to avoid requests to pass moral judgments and potentially distorted depictions of the past.

From the beginning, the documentary’s strong point as an informative cultural artifact is that it raises some difficult questions such as Robert Whitaker’s question: “What do we value about being human?”7 After a lobotomy, schizophrenic patients were often observed to be docile with flattened emotions, with significant reduction in psychic pain, but with potentially dehumanizing costs. However, many of these patients were already living in degrad-

During the documentary, one is continually posed the question of whether lobotomy was a medical breakthrough or travesty, juxtaposing Freeman as both “an angel of mercy” and as a “medical monster.”2 The use of the label “monster” alongside dramatic footage of an ice-pick being hammered into a patient’s skull serves to evoke Freeman as being an “inhumanely cruel and wicked person” and invites viewers to condemn his actions.3 This polarising and judgmental description continues to characterise Freeman as a zealot: the use of religious words such as “crusader” and “apostle” and sensational rhetoric such as “he went wild with excitement” (after discovering the surgical intervention), paints Freeman as a dangerous and fanatical figure. 4 The documentary employs active descriptors to depict his actions as “aggressively court[ing] the media” in order to popularise lobotomy.

This gives a sense of turmoil as to Freeman’s true objectives, indicating how

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Eva Deutscher

ing conditions in asylums and, without effective treatment, had slim chances of improvement, let alone discharge. These challenging questions makes one empathize with the families of lobotomized patients, who concluded it was worth the cost, whilst other families clearly felt otherwise. These differing perspectives ultimately lead us to reflect on what constitutes effective treatment and who should be charged with making that decision: the doctors, the patients, the family or society?

The documentary is limited in its portrayal of both the press, in regards to the procedure, and the public’s reception of Freeman’s work. A study undertaken on the portrayal of lobotomy in the popular press between 1935 -1960 explains how the initial use of “uncritical and sensational reporting styles” influenced the quick and widespread adoption of lobotomy as a psychiatric treatment.8 Seemingly successful lobotomies were widely publicized and praised, such as one article stating: “Psychosurgery Cured Me… an inspiring story of a nervous wreck, miraculously restored to normal life and happiness by a surgeon’s knife.”9 This only fed a media eager for miracle stories that would sell papers, and encouraging the appearance of a story of “plucking madness from the brain.”10 When describing three patients out of two hundred who died as a result of the operations, the coverage indicated that “all three [who

died] were already tormented with the desire to die.”11 Although for some, lobotomy may have been a miracle cure to certain symptoms of psychiatric illnesses, many of the facts were misrepresented in the sensationalised media.

The lack of transparency, little medical research into its long-term effects and media hype delayed the lobotomy’s gradual transition from positive to negative public perception. Furthermore, the awarding of the Nobel Prize to neurologist Egas Moniz in 1949 brought lobotomy the highest prize of global scientific validation, undoubtedly endorsing the operation and influencing leading institutions to adopt this procedure. This convinced the public that the procedure would ‘magically’ cure the mentally ill and alleviate the strain on overcrowded state hospitals.

All these factors contributed to the social, medical, and economic environment in which lobotomy was a warmly welcomed and considered a medically viable practice. Further evaluation of the historical context helps us understand Freeman’s actions given the plight of psychiatric patients at the time.

Mental Illness as a Social Burden In the past, mental illness had been considered to be caused by supernatural events. In the 1920s and 30s mental hospitals were custodial institutions where inmates were often chained and

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treated inhumanely, ironically resembling concentration camps. In 1937, over 400,000 patients lived in approximately 477 American psychiatric institutions.12 Over half the hospital beds in America were soon to be overwhelmed by veterans from World War Two.13,14 Thus, mental illness was regarded as a great burden to society, as it was limiting the available beds for returning soldiers. It is crucial to note that prior to the 1950s, there were few psychoactive medications for the treatment of mental illness, and the use of lobotomy allowed some patients to leave asylums and re-enter society.15 In this context, lobotomy was seen as no more severe than other previous experimental forms of treatment such as malarial therapy (1917), barbiturateinduced deep sleep therapy (1920), insulin (1933) and cardiazol (1934) shock therapies and electroconvulsive therapy (1938).16,17,18 During this time, the large social burden of psychiatric illness was such that patients’ families were willing to make tradeoffs. This was one of the factors that would motivate him to create not only a simple, accessible, and cheap technique but also one which would “get the patients back home” to their loved ones.19 Freeman’s own background provided some clues, as the film depicts both an enthusiastic physician, and also a man from a family that encouraged ambition

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and showmanship. This contrast between these two personas served to blur the lines between whether he was more misguided or blinded by ambition and the possibility of fame. The documentary positions the viewer to believe in Freeman’s sincere belief in the positive benefits of lobotomy, and as mentioned previously some patients did receive a reduction in symptoms. However, when he started performing the procedure himself, without neurosurgical training in his rooms, and indeed anywhere as required, he crossed the Rubicon.

In mental hospitals no consent procedure for staff or patients existed, and Freeman promoted lobotomy as a cost-effective procedure to relieve the state form the burden of medical care, something his own son acknowledged as “moving off the ground, doing for very good reasons the wrong thing.”20 Later after being discredited by the East Coast medical fraternity he moved West and started using the techniques on depressed housewives and misbehaving children, including a four year old.

Freeman failed in three critical ways: he failed to objectively evaluate the effectiveness of the procedure, he dismissed evidence that was contradictory to his claims, and he did not accept criticism that he might not have been acting in the best interests of his patients.

Throughout history there have been doctors who have revolted against mainstream science and refused to

Eva Deutscher

“ ... happiness by a surgeon’s knife. “

accept defeat, leading to both medical breakthroughs and medical disasters.

In presenting an objective and balanced documentary of a medical misadventure, it is important to inform the audience on how modern society has learned from the mistakes of our predecessors.

The documentary fails in this regard, and does not compare the inadequate research methods with the high standards of research today and how this could have contributed the widespread use of lobotomies. It was considered unethical to oppose or criticise another physician in the public light. However, this very criticism is paramount in the contemporary medical world, where all claims of success are rigorously subjected to scrutiny before being promoted for widespread use (for example: informed consent, properly constructed research trials, ethical guidelines, peer reviewed publications and a pre-eminent focus on best patient outcomes).

It is interesting to note Evidence Based Medicine only came about in the 1990s, 20 years after Freeman’s procedure was eventually deemed to be a failure due to the lack of beneficial results.21 Until Freeman died in 1972, he remained an advocate of lobotomies, trying to prove to the world that it had

not been the great medical catastrophe, which it was increasingly seen as being.

Jack El Hai, writer of the book “The Lobotomist,” concludes that rather than a monster or criminal, he ends up viewing Freeman as a tragic figure, blind to the consequences of his own faults and failings.22 The fact he traveled all over the country to meet former patients to follow up on progress after their lobotomies seems to indicate he may have been seeking redemption in the very patients he had treated before, and perhaps he felt some need to reassure himself he had done the right thing.

The documentary leaves one feeling that Walter Freeman was a man whose initial good intentions were corrupted by ambition and pride at the expense of society, psychiatry and most importantly his patients. The film fittingly concludes with footage of a car driving off into the distance, seemingly on a mission to nowhere, leaving the viewer unsettled, without a conclusion and giving the feeling that somehow we have been let down by the medical profession and psychiatry in particular - a missed opportunity to see how medicine has since progressed.

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“Rather than forget these people and events in service of a mythic tale of unblemished medical progress, by remembering heroes and villains, successes and failures, medicine should develop a reflective attitude toward its past and present in order to craft an ethical orientation towards its future.“23

endnotes 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

36

Barack Goodman and John Maggio, The Lobotomist [DVD], (USA: Ark Media, WGBH/American Experience, 2008).

Goodman and Maggio, The Lobotomist.

Definition (2011), Dictionary.com, accessed November 10, 2011, http://dictionary.reference.com Goodman and Maggio, The Lobotomist.

Ibid.

Definition (2011).

Goodman and Maggio, The Lobotomist.

Gretchen J. Diefenbach et. al, ‘Portrayal of Lobotomy in the Popular Press: 1935-1960,’ Journal of the History of the Neurosciences, 8, no. 1, (1999): 60-69.

Ibid, 60-69.

Goodman and Maggio, The Lobotomist.

Diefenbach et. al, ‘Portrayal of Lobotomy in the Popular Press: 1935-1960,’ 60-69.

George A. Mashour, Erin E. Walker and Robert L. Martuza, ‘Psychosurgery: past, present, and future,’ Brain Research Reviews 48, no. 3, (2005): 409-419.

Goodman and Maggio, The Lobotomist.

Mashour, Walker and Martuza, ‘Psychosurgery:

15.

16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

21.

22.

23.

past, present, and future,’ 409-419.

Ibid, 409-419.

Edward M. Brown, ‘Why Wagner-Jauregg won the Nobel Prize for discovering malaria therapy for General Paresis of the Insane,’ History of Psychiatry 11, no. 4, (2000): 371–382.

Edward Shorter, A History of Psychiatry: From the Era of the Asylum to the Age of Prozac, San Francisco: John Wiley & Sons 1997), 190–225.

Bengt Jansson, ‘Controversial Psychosurgery Result in a Nobel Prize,’ Nobelprize.org, 29 October 29, 1998, accessed July 6, 2010, http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1949/ moniz-article.html.

Goodman and Maggio, The Lobotomist.

Ibid.

Sandra J. Tanenbaum, ‘Evidence-Based Practice As Mental Health Policy: Three Controversies And A Caveat,’ Health Affairs 24, no. 1, (2005): 163-173.

Ibid.

Jenell Johnson, ‘A Dark History: Memories of Lobotomy in the New Era of Psychosurgery,’ Medicine Studies 1, no. 4, (2009): 367-378.

Eva Deutscher

Music at Ormond A brief look at the mellifluous marvels around college

Joshua Castle

A journal celebrating Ormond’s academic and creative works would not be complete without a recognition of the immense depth of musical ability which exists at the college. The written medium does not lend itself well the auditory side of things, but that little invention called the internet has allowed us to display classical and original contemporary musical compositions together.

From my first days as an Ormondian, music has been a constant force in uniting people and ideas. This seems strange, as music cannot be tangibly held; and I think this is why it has the power to impact people in the way in which it does. At the risk of sounding romantic about it all, I feel as though music can spark action and reaction, it can change a mood, it can precisely summarise a feeling, and it can become so perfectly intertwined with our memories - that it becomes the only way we can express something. When Bruce Springsteen reflected on the first time, as an impressionable teenager that he heard Bob Dylan’s Like a Rolling Stone, he felt as though “somebody had kicked open the door to your mind.” Music is more than passive.

The college’s value of community is so thoroughly connected with music. This has meant that Ormond music has certainly been the soundtrack to my year so far: musicals, open-mic nights, intercollegiate events, smokos and the casual tinkering of the JCR piano. I can guarantee that for many, the universality of music has provided a point of mutual enjoyment which contributes to the binding value of community at Ormond.

I encourage you to listen to and download this selection of pieces at papers.ormond.unimelb.edu.au

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R O N D O Chris Wallace-Crabbe

Over the steady, littoral ground bass one sees that our ocean has four natty trims of lace.

Container ships go by like rectangles.

Motor cars down there are barely awake.

… be still now

Wren and honeyeater pay visits occasionally to the outrageously national agapanthus, surely a weed, though, in its near-violet profusion.

Sun butters at least selective bluegum trunks while birds around are speaking myriad languages, most of them urgently: one sounds a keen mechanical bell, to what end?

… try to stay calm

Holiday houses still have chains across the drive.

Acoustically, cockies tear their sheets of steel when they’re not competing for bird-table preference.

But look down the bosky slope, now: a few more sedans trace the S-bend and small bridge on their way to some other bay where the foreshore has also been colonized by a million toothy dandelions; big cats live somewhere else again.

… be still, my heart.

Remorseless bass of big surf carries on.

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“ Without illusions but also without cynicism, the dissenter waits, keeping alive in the depth of the soul a vision of a better city and of saner policies and more hopeful opportunities than have yet disclosed themselves in the frenetic life of contemporary Australia. �

Davis McCaughey

Ecclesia Reformata et Semper Reformanda A church reformed and always to be reformed Sarah Martin

Among the many provocative addresses that Davis McCaughey gave while governor of Victoria, perhaps the most controversial was The Tracy Maund lecture delivered at the Royal Women’s Hospital in March 1987, in which he suggested that it was not appropriate to use legislation to regulate in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) research. He had earlier expressed this same view when speaking at the B’nai B’rith Anti-defamation Committee’s Annual Oration in 1986, where he was criticised by Louis Waller, Professor of Law at Monash and Chair of the Regulating Review Standing Committee on Fertility for his views.1 The 1987 lecture, which was extensively reported in The Age, caused a furore. He was condemned by some politicians for “poking his nose into politics” and “striking at the heart of our system of parliamentary democracy”2 and accused by others of not understanding his role as governor. Some who considered he had the right to speak on the issue suggested he was unwise to have spoken as he did.3 They were knee-jerk responses, overlooking the subtlety of his thesis and the positive reinforcement of the democratic process that he thought was being eroded. His argument on IVF needs to be examined more closely, particularly in the light of subsequent events. But it might be useful to first understand McCaughey’s thinking in a broader sense, and to find the measure of a man who would speak with such self-assurance and compulsion on a subject apparently outside his sphere of competence.

Students at the Presbyterian Theological Hall, Ormond College, the University of Melbourne, and theologians involved with the amalgamation of three Churches into one Uniting Church in Australia were already familiar with Davis McCaughey’s manner of expressing radical ideas in delicately constructed discourses that demanded intellectual and literary engagement from his listeners. Since his arrival in Melbourne from Britain in 1953 he had been encouraging people to think differently about the world around them. His audiences knew instinctively that he did not do this to court publicity or to big-note himself, but from a deep-seated belief that he had something to say that would help others find their own answers to significant questions. Once he became Governor, many more people from all walks of life were exposed to his particular vision of an ideal world.

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Much of what he said over the years was dependent on a central idea, best defined

by McCaughey himself through a series of essays and addresses delivered over a forty year period, and collected together in his penultimate publication, Tradition and Dissent, published in 1997.4 He opens by musing as to whether he has been saying the same thing over and over, “the mark of a bore” or whether there is “some theme that has been worth exploring, some way of thinking, talking and living that has guided me (perhaps without my knowing it) as I have responded to a number of demands to put into words what I and others want talked or written about”.5 Thoughtful reading of the book reveals the range and complexity of his thinking, above all his passion for the kind of university that builds on the traditions of the past, is open to the full range of ideas, is diverse and innovative in its thinking, and holds itself ready to create new structures if needed in its constant search for academic truth. For him an intellectually robust university was the key to a civilised society where social justice and cultural aspirations ensured the fullest equality of opportunity.

The words of the title to the book hold the key. In summary, McCaughey suggests that a properly functioning democratic society depends on the “constant dialogue between tradition and dissent.”6 The tradition inherent in each aspect of professional and community life must be seen as valuable since it has served the community in the past, but it should be open to re-evaluation and renewal through the process he calls ‘dissent’. In every area of working life, ethical questions and new ways of assessing the ‘tradition’ emerge, and it is therefore essential that men and women continue using their knowledge to confront and resolve the implications of developments that impinge on their area of expertise. For McCaughey, “progress in any branch of learning is only achieved by taking into account not only new data but also alternative, even opposing, ways of looking at problems.”7 McCaughey’s own history demonstrated the pattern whereby tradition was renewed and changed but never entirely abandoned, a pattern that made him hard to pigeonhole since there were some who regarded him as a conservative radical and others who saw him as a radical conservative. His ‘tradition’ was the deep Christian faith he learnt at his mother’s knee which, in substance, never left him. His time at Cambridge between the Wars, where he studied Literature and Economics gave him a wider view, however, and he came to recognise the narrowness of his Irish Presbyterian tradition, and the complacency of the Presbyterian community in Northern Ireland, which retained the power and wealth, locking the more numerous Catholic population out of educational and career opportunities. Troubled by the privileged and comfortable life of his family in Belfast where long-running social and religious conflicts were ignored, he rejected his potential role as successor to the commercial business built by his grandfather and father, and instead drew conclusions that pointed him towards engagement with issues of social justice and a subsequent degree in theology, albeit with a different mindset. For he had been introduced while at Cambridge to the Student Christian Movement (SCM),

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and the ecumenical principles it espoused gave him new reason to reaffirm his faith, a faith that would underpin almost every aspect of his life from that time on.

Christian questioning and dialogue were particularly robust prior to and during the Second World War, when communism and fascism posed threats that sharpened the intellectual argument in favour of faith. News of the brave stand, which many German theologians were taking in opposing the rising tide of Nazism, lent potency to the idea of a more open Christianity that acknowledged differences in faith while reaffirming the centrality of the Word of God. At Cambridge University, McCaughey was influenced by the teachers F.R. Leavis and I.A. Richards, who together pioneered the new approach to literature that made it the guide to prevailing intellectual and moral culture. McCaughey never forgot his educational experience at Cambridge, where each student worked individually with a tutor, so that intellectual exchange was built on trust and the opportunity to explore different paths, make mistakes and learn from each other, along Socratic traditions.

McCaughey probably first read T.S. Eliot’s 1917 essay ‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’ during that impressionable time at university. 8 He would later describe it as “pure gold” and variations on Eliot’s defense of tradition as the building blocks that supported and gave life to new ideas would continue to surface in McCaughey’s own writing. He arrived in Melbourne when Australia, wrestling with its self-image, was emerging from the long winter of its ‘cultural cringe’. As cultural liberalism developed in the 1960s and 1970s, McCaughey was at the forefront in encouraging re-examination of long-held truths in the light of new information and new ways of doing things. He always believed that the traditions and familiar historical background were the “framework within which all intellectual and imaginative activity takes place.”9 In 1957, when he became involved with the debate on the union of the Presbyterian, Methodist and Congregationalist Churches, McCaughey changed the agenda that was already on the table by suggesting that instead of cobbling together a Basis of Union from those things that the three Churches held in common, it would be more useful first for each Church to examine its own beliefs and history. With greater understanding of what the Word of God meant for them, the Churches could then bring their enriched traditions to union, with an acceptance of the others’ differences. A more rigorous and fruitful process for proceeding towards union, it took until 1977 for the new Uniting Church in Australia to be established. By that time, McCaughey had also spent nearly twenty years as Master of Ormond College, where his questioning of the traditional college role helped establish a more academic benchmark for colleges in general and strengthened the relationship between Ormond and the University.

As he became more deeply involved in the secular world, McCaughey could not

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help but reflect on the ability of his Church to deal with issues resulting from developments in science and technology, particularly in the field of medical research. Most churchpeople were ignoring the ethical dilemmas posed by the modern technology that made possible embryo surrogacy and IVF, to name just two developments. The religious framework, so long the foundation of society, was not flexible enough to keep up with these new possibilites, and the moral and ethical questions they raised. In 1982, when an invitation came to join the Medical Research Ethics Committee (MREC) of the Australian Government’s National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), McCaughey took it up with alacrity, knowing that he brought with him the received tradition and wisdom of his religious background as the framework on which to begin to assess new problems and tentatively work towards acceptable solutions for the community. He had, as far back as the 1960s, foreseen that the combined intelligence of medical practitioners, researchers, lawyers, social workers and other experts as well as laypeople would be required in order to come to grips with the implications of technological and medical breakthroughs, and that there was a need to stimulate public awareness of them. He had already begun extensive research of the published material on many of the contentious subjects and, from his own point of view, had begun to interrogate those religious foundations on which he had built his life. When he came to the committee in 1982, his special talent was to bring together the different ideas of a diverse group of people, to synthesise them and clarify the issues to help members arrive at some kind of consensus about the way forward, and then to put them before the public.

Returning, then, to the original criticism of McCaughey’s stand on the IVF issue, it can now be seen that he was indeed an informed member of the public when he delivered his lecture in 1987; both his theological background and his newly acquired understanding of modern ethics stood him in good stead, and he spoke with the practised confidence borne of over thirty years in positions of authority and respect. There was, moreover, legal support for the notion that the Governor did have the right to promote the non-partisan discussion of public affairs.10 McCaughey’s lengthy response to Waller’s contention that “the regulation of these matters is so important … that it ought to be done the way that is appropriate (here one could just as easily read ‘traditional’) …through the expression of the views and values of the democratically elected legislature” demonstrated that there were other ways to deal with the issue. The nub of McCaughey’s argument was that in “circumstances like this, where we have differing convictions on a moral issue, to attempt to settle the question by prohibitive legislation is not … the best way of regulating things”.11 Since the traditional regulations through legislation would not capture the issue of values, it was time, McCaughey suggested, to find other ways, and that in the interests of maintaining social democracy, the balance should always be tipped in favour of liberty, particularly when dealing with progress in science.12 His belief that the professionals closest to the problem would best be able to re-

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solve these issues in the interests of the public presupposes a non-partisan, diversely trained group, with high ethical integrity. In regard to hospital based solutions for medical procedures, he suggested that even within a single community there might be one group (hospital A) who sees the solution in a particular way, while there might be a quite different solution for another group (hospital B) dealing with the same issues. In other words, the solution must fit the current requirements, and the responsibility for decision-making ought to be laid at the door of those who would have to bear the consequences of those decisions. Then, and even now, this could be regarded as a radical digression from statutory provision, the traditional means of regulation.

There was purpose behind McCaughey’s public statement. He was in fact drawing attention to the prohibitive legislation on embryo experimentation that the Senate had recently introduced in the Australian Parliament. If that Bill had been passed, (and a majority favoured a ban on embryo experimentation) all embryo experimentation and research throughout Australia would have been shut down. He stood by his argument, letting the storm of protest die around him, and was rewarded when he learnt that his explication had helped legislators understand the nuances of ethical and moral considerations as opposed to legal solutions. They understood that the issue was too complex to be decided by law at that time, and dropped the legislation.13 McCaughey’s brilliance as an expounder of issues shone here. He balanced conventional thinking with a seemingly startling proposition that, when analysed, was essentially one involving common sense and fair-mindedness. He did not shirk from explaining its complexity, indeed he took the time to expand on a range of other issues that impinged on the central theme, delivering his explication without emotive language or emotionalism. He assumed, too, that his audience was intelligent enough and interested enough to follow the argument, and that, once in possession of the facts, would be able to come to an informed conclusion- even if it was a contrary view to his. The journalist reporting the lecture obviously felt so too, since the speech was reproduced almost in its entirety.

In 2012 this raises two questions, one about The Age and the other about McCaughey. Today the paucity of lengthy discussion in the pages of any newspaper in Australia is noticeable. With the emphasis on news 24/7, on forty-second sound bites with headlines designed to catch the wandering eyes of those in search of the next dramatic/shocking incident, and the financial pressures that are shrinking the press, it is doubtful whether The Age would have even included a short summary of the speech. Secondy, would McCaughey himself fare any better in this climate?

The reasonableness of his approach, his desire to explain the facts so that others could make up their own minds might be lost in the rush to the next big thing.

The world has moved on to a point where fundamentalist views from both sides of the political spectrum drown out, for the most part, the voice of reason and efforts

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to reach consensus. As each year succeeds the last, the possibility of McCaughey’s ideal world where tradition and dissent live in amicable harmony becomes more distant.

endnotes 1.

2.

3.

4.

Sarah Martin, Davis McCaughey A Life, (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2012), 290.

‘Governor slated for poking his nose into our politics’, The Mercury, March 1987.

‘Not wise but no threat to democracy’, The Mercury, March 26 1987.

Davis McCaughey, Tradition and Dissent, Melbourne University Press (Melb: Australia, 1997).

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

McCaughey, Tradition and Dissent, 1.

Ibid, 4.

McCaughey, ‘The Need for Dissent,’ in Tradition and Dissent, 29.

T.S. Eliot, ‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’ [1917], Selected Essays (Faber & Faber: London, 1932), cited in McCaughey, Tradition and Dissent, 52.

McCaughey, ‘Tradition and

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10.

11.

12.

13.

Freedom in Education’, in Tradition and Dissent, 56.

Colin Howard, ‘Governor can speak for himself,’ The Age, 26 March 1987.

‘Legislation is no answer to in-vitro impasse,’ The Age , 25 March 1987 Ibid.

Sarah Martin, Davis McCaughey A Life, (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2012), 292.

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The Dismissal 37 years later

Ross Sundberg

Introduction The dismissal of Prime Minister Gough Whitlam and his ministers by the Governor-General, Sir John Kerr, took place nearly 37 years ago. The event gave rise to widespread indignation and anger on the one hand, and on the other hand to great relief that the deadlock between the two Houses of Parliament had been resolved, and that an election was to be held to determine who should form government.

After the Governor-General’s official secretary had read the proclamation dissolving parliament, Mr. Whitlam, standing immediately behind him on the front steps of Parliament House, addressed the assembled throng and exhorted them to “Maintain your rage.” Some did, for many years. Others, who were not enraged, certainly remembered the event for years to come.

But after more than 36 years, interest had faded and became quiescent. Then, as a result of the publication earlier this year of Volume 2 of Jenny Hocking’s biography of Whitlam, Gough Whitlam – His Time, which revealed additional information about the circumstances leading up to the dismissal, interest was reignited. Certainly mine was. I was a junior barrister at the time of the dismissal. I heard of it on the day in question when Kenneth Hayne, also an alumnus of Ormond and now a High Court judge, burst into my chambers with the news. Nearly 37 years later, after a life in the law, I thought it perhaps useful to recall the events and update them in light of recent disclosures, primarily for the benefit of those who were not around at the time.

I will deal first with the Constitutional background, because that set the parameters for what ensued. Then I turn to the events leading to the Senate’s denial of supply to the government. Next comes the dismissal. Then I deal with Chief Justice Barwick’s involvement. That is followed by Justice Mason’s part, and his response to the Hocking disclosures. Finally, I record Roger Pescott’s recollections of his conversations with Sir John Kerr shortly after the dismissal.

Constitutional Background Chapter One of the Australian Constitution deals with the Parliament. The legisla-

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tive power of the Commonwealth is vested in the Parliament, which consists of the Queen, a Senate and a House of Representatives: section one. Section two of the chapter deals with the Governor-General: A Governor-General appointed by the Queen shall be Her Majesty’s representative in the Commonwealth, and shall have and may exercise in the Commonwealth during the Queen’s pleasure, but subject to this Constitution, such powers and functions of the Queen as Her Majesty may be pleased to assign to him.

At all times relevant to this article various powers and functions were conferred on the Governor-General by Letters Patent dated 29 October 1900. This document was replaced by Letters Patent dated 21 August 1984.

Parts two and three of the Chapter deal respectively with the Senate and the House of Representatives. Part five (which consists of sections 51 to 60) deals with the powers of the Parliament. Section 53, which is headed “Powers of the Houses in respect of legislation,” provides, amongst other things: • • • • • •

Proposed laws appropriating revenue or moneys, or imposing taxation, shall not originate in the Senate.

The Senate may not amend proposed laws imposing taxation, or proposed laws appropriating revenue or moneys for the ordinary annual services of the government.

The senate may amend any proposed laws so as to increase any proposed change or burden on the people.

The Senate may return to the House of Representatives any proposed law which the Senate is not permitted to amend, requesting the omission or amendment of any items or provisions therein.

The House may make any of such omissions or amendments, with or without modification.

Except as provided in this section, the Senate “shall have equal power with the House of Representatives in respect of all proposed laws.”

The appropriation of revenue or moneys for the running of the government is what is called “supply.”

Chapter two of the Constitution (which consists of sections 61 to 70) deals with the Executive Government. Section 61 vests the executive power of the Commonwealth in the Queen, exercisable by the Governor-General as the Queen’s representative. Section 62 creates a Federal Executive Council to advise the GovernorGeneral in the government of the Commonwealth, its members to be chosen by the Governor-General and to hold office during his pleasure. Section 64 provides:

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The Governor-General may appoint officers to administer such departments of State of the Commonwealth as the Governor-General in Council may establish.

Such officers shall hold office during the pleasure of the GovernorGeneral. They shall be members of the Federal Executive Council, and shall be the Queen’s Ministers of State for the Commonwealth.

One of the Members of State is the Prime Minister, though the office is not mentioned in the Constitution. Section 63 provides that a reference to “the GovernorGeneral in Council” (for example in section 64) is to be construed as referring to the Governor-General acting with the advice of the Federal Executive Council.

Chapter 3 of the Constitution deals with the Judicature. It vests the judicial power of the Commonwealth in the High Court and in such other courts as the Parliament creates. It then describes that the types of cases federal courts may hear – that is to say their jurisdiction. I need say no more about this Chapter at this stage.

Events Leading to the Denial of Supply In December 1974 the Executive Council appointed the Minister for Minerals and Energy, Rex Connor, to borrow on the government’s behalf a sum not exceeding $US 4 billion repayable in twenty years time. The authorisation recited that the loan was for “temporary purposes.” This expression derives from the clause 3(8) of part one of the Financial Agreement made between the Commonwealth and States in 1927. This required the Commonwealth and each State to submit to the Australian Loan Council constituted by the Agreement a program setting out the amount it decided to raise by loans during each financial year for purposes other than, amongst other things, “temporary purposes.” The Loan Council’s approval was required for most loans, though not for loans for “temporary purposes.” The Council consists of the Prime Minister and the six State Premiers. At the time then, there were four non-Labor Premiers, and the government may have doubted its ability to secure the required approval. Hence the characterisation of the loan as for “temporary purposes.” The $US 4 billion loan was to be raised overseas through the offices of a broker, Tirath Khemlani, and not be way of the Commonwealth’s customary source of loan funds.

At the time of these events, the government, led by Prime Minister Whitlam, controlled the House of Representatives, and the opposition parties, led by Malcolm Fraser, controlled the Senate.

The “loans affair” was one of the complaints of the opposition that let it to cause the Senate to defer supply bills, thus potentially cutting off the money for govern-

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ment services. Unless the opposition were to back down, money for these services would shortly run out. The Senate also deferred loan bills authorising the “temporary” overseas loan. In announcing its deferral of the bills, the opposition stated that the bills would not be proceeded with until the government agreed to an early election.

The Senate’s power to defer the bills is not in doubt. Section 53 of the Constitution declares that except as provided in the section, the Senate has “equal power” with the House of Representatives in respect of all proposed laws. As appears above, the section does fetter the Senate’s powers in relation to many bills, but does not preclude it from deferring or refusing to pass them. This has been accepted by the High Court, which has held that the Senate does not occupy a subordinate place in the exercise of legislative power. It is an essential part of the Parliament in which the legislative power of the Commonwealth is vested. The Senate retains the power to defer or reject a proposed law in any case that is not within the specific prohibitions in section 53. That power enables it to defer or reject and proposed law, even one (such as an appropriation or money bill) which because of section 53 it cannot originate or amend.

In the ensuing weeks there was much to-ing and fro-ing by the protagonists, but the deadlock remained. On the morning of 11 November 1975 the Prime Minister confirmed to the Governor-General that his talks with the opposition had not produced any change, and that he intended to govern without parliamentary supply.

Later that day the Prime Minister came to Government House intending to advise that a half-Senate election be held on 13 December. He appears to have hoped that that election would give the government a majority of votes in the Senate.

The Dismissal The Governor-General’s account of his meeting with the Prime Minister is recorded in detail in his autobiography Matters for Judgement (1978). There he says he addressed the Prime Minister as follows: ‘…You have told me this morning on the phone that…[y]ou intend to govern without parliamentary supply.’ He said, ‘Yes.’ I replied that in my view he had to have parliamentary supply to govern and as he had failed to obtain it and was not prepared to go to the people, I had decided to withdraw his commission.

The Governor General then handed to Whitlam a letter in which, in reliance on section 64 of the Constitution, he terminated his appointment and that of the other ministers, and said that he proposed to send for Mr. Fraser to commission him to form a caretaker government on condition that he was able to secure supply

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and willing to let the issue go to the people. Shortly after, Mr. Fraser agreed to these conditions and was commissioned as caretaker Prime Minister. The supply bills, having been deferred in the Senate, were still within its control, and supply was granted soon after.

The double dissolution election was held on 13 December 1975. The Fraser government obtained control of both Houses of Parliament. It secured the largest majority in the House of Representatives since Federation.

The dismissal spawned a plethora of books, pamphlets and articles, some with arresting titles. Paul Kelly, a member of the Canberra Press Gallery, produced The Unmaking of Gough (1976). Laurie Oakes, the head of the Melbourne Sun’s Canberra Bureau, and regarded by many as Australia’s leading political journalist, contributed Crash through or Crash (1976). Clem Lloyd and Andrew Clark, both journalists, offered Kerr’s King Hit (1976). Alan Reid, TV commentator, special correspondant of the former Bulletin and journalist, wrote The Whitlam Venture (1976).

The two main protragonists also contributed. As mentioned earlier, Sir John wrote his autobiography. In 1979 Mr. Whitlam published The Truth of the Matter and in 1985 The Whitlam Government 1972-1975.

Chief Justice Barwick’s involvement In his autobiography, Sir John said that while he was aware that Mr. Whitlam did not believe it to be proper for the Governor-General to consult the Chief Justice of Australia, he intended to do so, though on but one aspect of the matter, namely his constitutional authority and power to dismiss the Prime Minister and force a dissolution. He would not ask Sir Garfield Barwick for advice on what he should do, but only as to his powers.

The Chief Justice agreed to advise the Governor-General as to his powers, and on 10 November attended at Admiralty House in Sydney, and handed the GovernorGeneral a letter of advice. In the letter Sir Garfield first confirmed what he had earlier said verbally, when he had agreed to provide advice, about the propriety of so doing: In our conversations I indicated that I considered myself as Chief Justice of Australia, free, on Your Excellency’s request, to offer you legal advice as to Your Excellency’s constitutional rights and duties in relation to an existing situation which, of its nature, was unlikely to come before the Court.

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Sir Garfield then gave his advice: The Constitution of Australia is a federal Constitution which embodies the principle of Ministerial responsibility. The Parliament consists of two houses, the House of Representatives and the Senate, each popularly elected, and each with the same legislative power, with the one exception that the Senate may not originate nor amend a money bill.

Two relevant constitutional considerations flow from this structure of the Parliament. First, the Senate has constitutional power to refuse to pass a money bill; it has power to refuse supply to the Government of the day. Secondly, a Prime Minister who cannot ensure supply to the Crown, including funds for carrying on the ordinary services of Government, must either advise a general election (of a kind which the constitutional situation may then afford) or resign. If being unable to secure supply, he refuses to take either course, Your Excellency has constitutional authority to withdraw his Commission as Prime Minister.

Though Sir Garfield did not refer to the specific provisions of the Constitution that support his opinion, they are those I have set out above. They demolish any suggestions that the Governor-General lacked power to act as he did. First, as interpreted by the High Court, they show that the Senate was entitled to refuse supply or, as happened, not to grant it but to defer consideration of the grant. Second, the Governor-General had express power to dismiss the Prime Minister.

Chief Justice Barwick’s advice has been attacked both for its content and for the fact that he agreed to give it. While the “existing situation” to which he referred, namely the Senate’s denial of supply, was unlikely to come before the Court, it may be that the validity of the Governor-General’s action could have. The Chief Justice did not refer to this, though he must have appreciated that the dismissal of the Prime Minister would probably be the result of his advice. The High Court has jurisdiction in “all matters… in which a writ of Mandamus or prohibition or an injunction is sought against an officer of the Commonwealth” (section 75.v). Mr. Fraser, the caretaker Prime Minister, was an officer of the Commonwealth (see section 64 of the Constitution set out above), and could have been the subject of proceedings to restrain him from exercising power on the ground that the Governor-General had no power to dismiss Mr. Whitlam. As I have suggested, and as the Chief Justice thought, such a proceeding was likely to fail. But for present purposes, that is not the point. The High Court (and any other Australian court) is obliged to deal with such litigation as is put before it, however weak or hopeless.

It is not at liberty to ignore it as a nuisance. So the perceived weakness of any such claim is not a reason to ignore its prospect. Had Mr. Whitlam, or anyone else with

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standing to raise the matter, sought such relief in the High Court, the Chief Justice could hardly have sat on the case.

Of course Mr. Whitlam and his advisors decided to fight the dismissal in the Parliament and not in court, and Sir Garfield was spared the embarrassment of the issue coming before the Court.

Sir Garfield Barwick was not only Chief Justice. He had a conservative political political past. In the eight years preceding his elevation to the High Court he was a member of Parliament, Attorney-General and then Minister for External Affairs in the Menzies coalition government. That might be considered an additional reason for him to have declined to assist the Governor-General.

Sir Anthony Mason’s involvement At the conclusion of the chapter on the dismissal in his autobiography A Radical Tory (1995), Sir Garfield Barwick said that since completing the text there had been a telecast of an interview he gave to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), in which he had disclosed that he had spoken to Sir Anthony Mason, then a High Court Judge, on the day before the dismissal. He added that, having made that disclosure, he would now record what actually happened.

The transcript of the ABC interview is an appendix to the autobiography, and Sir Anthony is not mentioned in it. In any event, Sir Garfield recorded that after the Governor-General had received the letter of advice, he telephoned to enquire whether Sir Garfield would ask Sir Anthony, as a former Solicitor-General for the Commonwealth, what he thought about the Governor-General’s powers. Sir Garfield called on Sir Anthony in his court chambers and told him the substance of his letter to the Governor-General. According to Sir Garfield, Sir Anthony said “he quite agreed with the view I had expressed and I may say he did so without any reluctance.” Sir Garfield passed this on to the Governor-General.

In his autobiography Sir John Kerr wrote this mysterious passage: My solitude was tempered by conversation with one person only other than the Chief Justice. The conversation did not include advice as to what I should do but sustained me in my own thinking as to the imperatives within which I had to act, and in my conclusions, already reached, as to what I could and should do.

The person with whom I spoke was not and has never been engaged in politics. His name has never been mentioned in any of the speculation about persons I might have consulted. The substance of our conversation is recorded and will some day, when for history’s sake

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the archives are opened, be revealed. I will not disclose it further.

In due course the archives were opened, and Jenny Hocking has used Sir John’s personal and confidentaional papers in the second volume of her impressive biography of Whitlam. Chapter 10 is about “The Third Man.” The author recounts that in March 1975 the Governor-General requested the vice-chancellor of the Australian National University to form a group within the University to advise him on the nature and extent of his powers as Governor-General. Sir Anthony Mason was a member of the group. He was then on the High Court and a pro-chancellor of the University. In a letter to the Governor General, Sir Anthony said he felt some difficulty in participating in discussions, because they covered important questions which may sooner or later come before the High Court for discussion. He continued: No doubt the questions which you have in mind are presently hypothetical. Unfortunately the hypothetical questions of today have a distressing habit of becoming the actual questions of tomorrow.

Accordingly Sir Anthony doubted whether it would be proper for him to become a member of the group on what he called “a continuing basis.”

Some other members of the group became concerned about the University’s involvement in partisan political controversy, and the group was dissolved. However, what Sir John called his “running conversation” with Sir Anthony continued, and they discussed probable future events and discretionary alternatives available to the former.

Sir John’s records disclose his disappointment that Sir Anthonry would not allow their conversations in October and November 1975 to become public: “He would be happier… if history never came to know of his role.” Sir John wrote: I shall keep the whole matter alive in my mind, and if this document is found among my archives, it will mean that my final decision is that truth must prevail, and, as he played a most significant part in my thinking at that critical time, and as he will be in the shades of history when this is read, his role should be known.

From the “shades of history” Sir Anthony responded to Jenny Hocking’s disclosures, which had received extensive media coverage. His account was published in, among other places, The Age newspaper on 27 August, 2012. Sir Anthony agreed that his conversations with the Governor-General did not include advice as to what the latter should do, but sustained him in the decisions he had already reached as to his powers and what he should do. Sir Anthony stressed that on all occasions he told the Governor-General that he should warn the Prime Minister that, if he did

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not agree to hold a general election, his commission would be terminated.

Sir Anthony recorded that the Governor-General asked him if he would draft a letter of termination and he agreed to do so. The draft was not in fact used, and was returned to its author. Sir Anthony made no contribution to the GovernorGeneral’s statement of reasons for his decision.

Sir Anthony agreed that the Chief Justice had shown him his letter of advice, and that he said “It’s okay.” He also agreed that on two occasions after the dismissal Sir John said that their discussions should be made public for the sake of history.

Sir Anthony’s response was that if that were to be done, he would need to record that he had told Sir John he should warn the Prime Minister and give him the option of calling a general election. Sir John did not pursue the matter.

Hocking takes a dim view of the Governor-General’s solicitation of external advice.

She says: Kerr’s actions represented a dramatic subversion of the role of the Governor-General in a parliamentary democracy as an appointed official who acted on the advice of his ministers. In seeking external advice without the knowledge, much less the approval, of the Prime Minister, Kerr had stepped away from the office of the GovernorGeneral defined in terms of its relationship with the elected government.

Roger Pescott’s recollections Roger Pescott is a former diplomat who in early 1975 accompanied the GovernorGeneral on a state visit to Nepal, India, Pakistan and Iran. He was later a minister in the Kennett government in Victoria. In his article in The Age newspaper of 6 September 2012, Mr. Pescott says that publicity about Sir Anthony Mason’s involvement in the period leading up to the dismissal had encouraged him to put on record information to fill in some missing pieces. Two matters of present relevance are raised by Mr. Pescott.

The first concerns Sir John’s view of the office of Governor-General. He said he had not stepped down from the active role of Chief Justice of New South Wales to “see out his time as a benign Governor-General without an active role.” Mr. Pescott was impressed by the Governor-General’s handling of the state visit, which constituted “a broadening of the role of a Governor-General.”

On their return from the state visit, Sir John told Mr. Pescott that he thought the traditional machinery for the passage of legislation did not provide a GovernorGeneral with nearly enough information for him to form an opinion as to whether

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it was going to be a good law or a bad one. He suggested to the Prime Minister that there be a new staff member at Yarralumba to advise him on the background and significance of legislation he was expected to sign into law. The Prime Minister accepted the suggestion, and the position was offered to Mr. Pescott. He had to decline the offer because he was then stationed at the Australian embassy in East Berlin. The dismissal took place before the position could be filled.

These disclosures support the view of Hocking and others that Sir John had an unusual and expansive view of his role. While the broadening of the GovernorGeneral’s role by representing Australia overseas is now accepted as a conventional activity for a Governor-General, receiving briefings on a measure passed by the House of Representatives and the Senate in order to enable him or her to determine whether it is a good law, has not been seen as the Queen’s, a Governor-General’s of a governor’s role in a Westminster style parliamentary democracy. By all means the Governor-General should be briefed so that he or she understands the measure put forward for the Royal Assent. But to see that as the opportunity to pass judgement upon the merits of the measure is a deep intrusion into the province of the legislature.

The second matter of interest in Roger Pescott’s article concerns Sir John’s reasons for not acting in accordance with Sir Anthony Mason’s advice that he should warn the Prime Minister that he faced dismissal if he did not agree to go to the people.

Mr. Pescott says that at a meeting between them in mid-December 1975 Sir John said there were two reasons why he did not warn the Prime Minister. The first was that he did not want to involve the Queen. He believed that had he alerted the Prime Minister to the course he proposed to take, Mr. Whitlam would have taken immediate steps to secure his (Sir John’s) dismissal by the Queen. It will be remembered that the Governor-General’s service is at the Queen’s pleasure. That, said Sir John, would have meant a hiatus, with both parties vying for the Queen’s support. His deliberate omission to advise or consult Buckingham Palace about what he proposed to do was, he said, also intended to protect the Queen.

The second reason, perhaps less persuasive, was that Sir John felt no duty to consult or give advice to Mr. Whitlam, who was junior to him on the protocol ladder.

Mr. Pescott’s firm impression was that Sir John’s training as a judge led him to have the courage, rightly or wrongly, to make a call using his judgement of the situation in the Parliament at that time; to act after weighing up the arguments put before him by the opposing teams.

That is how a judge would decide a dispute between opposing litigants. Consistent with that was the Governor-General’s detailed explanation for his decision to determine the Prime Minister’s commission, which he handed to him and thereafter published.

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Conclusion The Governor-General’s dismissal of the Prime Minister gave rise to much controversy. There were probably more vocal dissenters than there were vocal supporters of what he had done. The many people who voted so emphatically for change at the election following the dismissal were not necessarily endorsing the GovernorGeneral’s action. It is more likely they were grateful for the early opportunity to ensure that what they perceived as a chaotic government did not return to office.

As I have attempted to show, those who disagreed with Sir John’s action were not on strong ground in their denial of his power to dismiss. They were on firmer ground when they attacked the exercise of his discretion to withdraw the Prime Minister’s commission. Instead of acting when he did, the Governor-General could have waited a little longer. The deadlock may have been broken by a backdown by one side or the other: an early election or the provision of supply by the opposition. However the discretion was the Governor-General’s: how to exercise it, and if in favour of dismissal, when. He took advice. He heard both sides. He did what he thought was his duty. And he gave his reasons for what he had done.

Of course Mr. Whitlam had the last word. He was born two years after Sir John, but is still with us twenty one years after the latter’s death. The last two entries in Deane Wells’ The Wit of Whitlam (1976) are observations made by Mr. Whitlam on the day of the dismissal. The first was in response to the Official Secretary’s reading of the proclamation dissolving both Houses of Parliament, ending with the words “God Save the Queen,” to which Mr. Whitlam replied: Well might we say “God save the Queen”; because nothing will save the Governor-General. The proclamation you have just heard was counter-signed “Malcolm Fraser” – who will go down in history as “Kerr’s cur.”

Later that day at his press conference Mr. Whitlam attended to Mr. Fraser’s appointment as “caretaker” Prime Minister: It is the first time the burglar has been appointed as caretaker.

Deane Wells observes that “nobody laughed. It was too late for laughter, but Whitlam knew that wit still served a purpose.”

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Cutting the Gordian Knot Environmental Management and the Federal Structure

Nicholas Mills

Introduction Australia’s federal structure has had a profound impact on the way State and Commonwealth actors interact with one another in crafting national regulation of water; however, there is little to suggest that it has presented a significant ‘obstacle’ to effective governance. In part, the nature of the federal authority underpinning water and environmental legislation has been clarified by High Court rulings on Commonwealth constitutional authority. Further, the actors themselves have developed a largely effective working relationship. There are a number of flaws with the existing regulatory model, some of which are tied to the way federalism has informed that model. However, there is no clear alternative to the existing federal division of authority, and no impetus to radically overhaul it. Where ‘effective management’ is obstructed, it is by factors beyond the form and function of Australian federal governance.

Parameters The Federal Structure as it relates to Legal Regulation of Water Under the principles of Australian federalism, Commonwealth heads of legislative power are contained within section 51 of the Constitution, all other powers being reserved within the plenary power of the States.1 Within s. 51, there is “no specific Commonwealth power over the environment,”2 nor is there a power that expressly pertains to water management.3 The absence of an express power does not prevent a Commonwealth law from regulating environmental matters or water, however, provided that the law that does so is validly enacted under another ‘head of power’ in s. 51.4 This principle of statutory interpretation, established in Amalgamated Society of Engineers v Adelaide Steamship Co. Ltd, has allowed the Commonwealth government to effect some environmental and water regulation through a suite of ‘indirect’ heads of legislative power available under s. 51.5 The most significant recent development in Commonwealth environmental regulation has been the recognition of the broader scope of the powers available under section 51(xxix) of the Constitution, the ‘external affairs’ power. The High Court’s decision in Commonwealth v Tasmania (1983) (Tasmanian Dams) confirmed that

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legislation made under s. 51(xxix) was valid even where it legislated with regard to matters without an express head of Commonwealth power, provided it satisfied a series of tests relating to the ‘external affair’ or treaty it legislated with regard to.6 Commentators have been careful to note the limitations of this power, given the High Court’s requirement that the legislation be appropriately adapted from a treaty entered into in good faith, and the likelihood that this would have to be determined by a court on the facts of each piece of legislation.7 However, the decision greatly expanded the Constitutional grounds under which the Commonwealth could regulate environmental matters. While there is some disagreement on how broad is the extent of the Commonwealth’s power to legislate for environmental matters under s. 51(xxix), the impact of Tasmanian Dams on the capacity of the Commonwealth government to enact legislation that is reasonable and adapted to the purpose of giving effect to international obligations with regard to environmental matters is widely accepted to have been significant.8 The full potential of this legislative power has, arguably, yet to be exercised.9 In the wake of the decision in Tasmanian Dams, the Commonwealth adopted a greater supervisory role over environmental management, which extended to a national ‘oversight’ role with regard to water regulation after the COAG reform process emerged in 1994.10 In addition, it purportedly holds a power to regulate matters in the national interest, one deferred to the Commonwealth by the states rather than expressly stated under the Constitution.11 However, these powers are arguably accommodations by the states, which make it unnecessary for the Commonwealth to resort to its putative powers under s. 51(xxix). By granting the Commonwealth greater influence in regulation and management through a referral of powers, the States retain plenary authority over water as a resource, without their regulation becoming repugnant under the operation of a Commonwealth law.12 13 The powers of s. 51(xxix) confirmed in Tasmanian Dams have been used reservedly; with regard to water management, the Commonwealth relies on the Ramsar Wetland Convention and the Convention on Biological Diversity to enliven the power, to support the enactment of the Water Act (2007).

Definitions Currently, legal regulation of water management in Australia is understood to require balancing a number of objectives. The National Water Initiative, though not legally enforceable, identifies top-down regulation, access entitlements, resolution of over allocation, water accounting and the establishment of water markets as the central functions of their role.14 The Murray-Darling Basin Authority takes a comparable approach, although its mandate places a greater focus on the efficiency of allocation and use, using a number of ‘caps’ to assess those goals, including the power to implement a sustainable level of ‘take’.15 These approaches represent the way management and regulations are currently

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pursued in an Australian context; they reflect the methods that have been adopted under the federal structure of government. Therefore, there are benefits to limiting the definition of management and regulation to their parameters, in particular the fact that their shortcomings highlight the practical obstacles in the existing system.

However, water quality remains a crucial element of water management.16 17 At first glance, it seems inherent in water management to ensure a level of quality that makes the resource valuable, and to incorporate such an assessment into overall management. Its value as a resource is inherent in the purposes it can be put to.

Any prevention of contamination also offsets the cost of having to purify it to restore it to a usable level. However, there are two additional elements that need to be considered. The first is that the management of sources of water pollution is not a settled issue; it is still open to debate, particularly over the efficiencies of controlling point and nonpoint sources of contaminants.18 The second is that salinity levels in the Murray-Darling have been argued to be the only significant issue in water management that spills between State jurisdictions.19 Therefore, despite its absence as a separate goal in the mandates of a number of regulatory authorities, water quality remains a crucial issue in environmental management and legal regulation of water.

There is little academic work on the detrimental effects of this omission; while a number of writers make arguments as to how water regulation could be better structured to pursue ecological goals, they avoid addressing whether these goals should be incorporated into existing mandates through additional legislation.20 Further, while it could be argued that a failure to incorporate ecological awareness into management is an obstacle, there is no suitable domestic comparison; Australia has arguably never given a greater priority to ecological concerns in its regulatory authorities.21 Comparing Australian management to international alternatives risks obscuring an assessment of Australia’s form of federalism, and the way in which it impacts on regulation.

However, international approaches to water management offer some perspective on how Australia has set its standards, and what they have excluded. The Global Water Partnership’s Rio+20 policy brief takes a markedly different approach to Australian regulatory bodies; it places greater emphasis on balancing economic growth with preservation of resources, and identifies water resources management as a common negative externality.22 Its paper on effective water governance takes a more muted approach, allowing for the fundamental political forces at play in any legal regulation.23 Neither document aims to set a measure for ‘effectiveness’, principally because both acknowledge that this objective will differ between states. This is echoed in the absence of an Australian standard for effectiveness; while it is readily used as a term, there are few tangible elements to it apart from allocative efficiency,24 or a repeti-

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tion of policy objectives like access, management and flexibility without a clear qualitative target.25 Even here, long-term resource protection is a secondary goal.26 Current Management and Regulation The current operation of regulatory bodies belies the complexity of manoeuvring behind them. Arguably, there has been a balance struck between federal power, whose limits have yet to be established in the wake of a number of High Court cases, and the residue of state control over resources.27 28 A number of commentators have asserted that, following Tasmanian Dams and Nathan Dams cases, and given the ability of Commonwealth legislation to rely on a number of heads of power, the Commonwealth’s powers with regard to the environment has been greatly expanded.29 30 It stops short, however, of occupying the entire field; not only is the legislative power under the external affairs power contingent on international obligations, which the Commonwealth legislature cannot unilaterally create, but it is further subject to the review of the High Court on the basis of how appropriate and adapted the domestic legislation is.31 Perhaps more importantly, the Commonwealth has shown no intention of attempting to bring environmental management entirely under its control. Since Tasmanian Dams, the Commonwealth has pursued a policy of ‘cooperative federalism’, limiting its involvement in environmental matters and liaising with the states through a number of forums and political ‘compacts’.32 33 The only significant deviation from this was the Howard Government’s proposed “unilateral… takeover of the Murray-Darling river system,”34 which Brian Galligan attributes more to political desperation than to deep-seated concerns about environmental management by the states.35 The states, in return, have retained a significant degree of power in environmental issues, despite the theoretical argument that Commonwealth power may extend further than it has been exercised.36 There have been some voices, both within and without state governments, which have called for a referral of existing State control where necessary.37 However, in practice, the establishment of any federal water management body has always been preceded by extensive consultations with the States, and marked by its limited actual regulatory authority.38 The result is that these bodies have held little more than a supervisory role, one dependent on bilateral or multilateral agreements with states rather than ‘gunboat diplomacy’ built on putative Commonwealth powers.39 This is reflected in the structure of water regulation bodies across the country; although the National Water Initiative and Murray-Darling Basin Authority play important roles, the majority of the water regulation and management is developed by individual state bodies.40 These bodies, in turn, reflect the agreements on division of power maintained through multilateral summits for decades, including the River Murray

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Commission (1917), the Premiers’ Conference (1990), and the Intergovernmental Agreement on the Environment (IGAE) (1992).41 Structurally, Australian environmental management has changed very little since Tasmanian Dams and Nathan Dam. These cases raised the possibility that the external affairs power could expand Commonwealth powers in a way never before contemplated.42 However, the consequences of these decisions have been dampened by the State governments’ recommitment to a cooperative model drawn along federal lines.

In effect, Australia’s federal structure has imprinted itself heavily upon methods of environmental management. Particularly, concerns over maintaining an appropriate federal balance, respecting both Commonwealth ambition and conceptions of ‘states’ rights’,43 have ridden roughshod over more pragmatic concerns over the merits of decentralised and centralised management strategies. While it would appear that one could be transposed over the other, the rhetoric that has emerged from state and federal governments has dwelt on federal divisions and political concerns, rather than the dynamics of regional management.44 45 Where divisions in managerial responsibility have been drawn, they have been at state lines, an approach that has drawn criticism for failing to understand the regional dynamics of water management.46 47 The Commonwealth government has latterly claimed a supervisory role, but appears reluctant to pursue a greater power beyond the two roles it currently occupies: supervision of state management, including through the setting of MDBA plans which states are compelled to accord with, and responsibility for matters of a national or international system.

There is nothing to suggest the Commonwealth will redraw these divisions in the near future; nothing has prompted such a progression since Tasmanian Dams. In the opinion of many, the Commonwealth has done the opposite, withdrawing from a potentially greater responsibility.48 49 50 What is clear is that the federal system is fundamental to an understanding of Australia’s national water regulation and environmental management. What is less clear is whether the current structure is obstructing more effective management; whether it can be modified within existing parameters to be more effective; and whether a more drastic reform of the federal blueprint is necessary.

Criticisms Though the existing models of water management in Australia are clearly structured around federalism, this is not to say it represents the “greatest single obstacle to effective environmental management.” At the least, the contemporary Australian model has been developed as a relatively effective regulatory model under a federal structure. The federal structure, as an obstacle to more effective management, dovetails with the way in which Commonwealth and state governments have elected to

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distribute regulatory powers. To some extent, the federal structure as a distribution of powers is much less significant than the way its framework has been harnessed by various actors.51 52 53 Federalism’s greatest impact upon managerial and regulatory systems is the way in which it precludes a discussion of the merits of centralisation and decentralisation. By dividing interests and stakeholders along arbitrary state borders, the Australian system distracts itself from better assessing how regional interests should interact with a national framework. Crucially, no academic commentary believes that a division based on states and the Commonwealth alone, without further modification, is sufficient for water management. Instead, there are three major approaches to how the federal system could be better adapted to effective management: a move towards uniformity dictated by the federal government, a division of management roles based on regional interests, and a hybrid approach that better reconciles the former with the latter.

Argument for a Uniform Approach A restructuring of water regulation and management that gives greater powers to the Commonwealth allows for the prioritisation of effective standards, and the incorporation of some externalities. In effect, by shifting the power of legal regulation to a body accountable for all parties, rather than an arbitrary segment of parties, the single body is able to avoid both the ‘tragedy of the commons’ and ‘race to the bottom’ problems commonly associated with resource use.

The ‘tragedy of the commons’ problem is commonly understood to be offset by a regulation of the common resource.54 55 Even with regard to pollution, which Garrett Hardin believes to be an equivalent crisis with fewer solutions, the introduction of regulation to create a ‘cost’ for externalities can drive parties to adopt a more sustainable approach to the resources in question.56 With regard to Australian water, particularly access for agriculture and contamination by point and non-point runoff, imposing regulation on use is crucial to ensuring that the resource is preserved, in quantity and quality. Furthermore, with regard to the Murray-Darling basin, it is necessary to ensure that the ability of upstream users to act with relative impunity with regard to run-off is counteracted by regulation.

Within Australia’s federal structure, the ‘tragedy of the commons’ operates on two tiers. The first concerns water resources contained within state borders, whereby state laws can extend to all immediately involved parties. The second concerns water that crosses state boundaries, the Murray-Darling Basin being the most prominent example. Here, state-by-state regulation can create widely divergent approaches to a common problem.57 Of particular importance is that the distribution of pollution as an externality changes from region to region; upstream regions retain the benefits of overuse of water, of contamination, and of ineffective regulation of run-off, while the negative externalities are borne by those regions which are downstream.

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This dovetails with the resource-management concept of the ‘race to the bottom’, whereby each region has an incentive to maximise its use of the resource, and ensure that negative externalities are passed on to others. Dividing regulation among the states creates no reason to dissuade exploitation of water by those states that don’t suffer the detriment of that exploitation. Although the relevant players are larger, and fewer, the essential dynamic of the ‘tragedy of the commons’ remains the same: governments are able to enjoy the political and economic benefits of overuse and ineffective management, while negative externalities are borne by others.

Essentially, this reasoning underpins the argument for centralisation put forward

by Peel and Godden in ‘Australian Environmental Management: A ‘Dams’ story’, and echoed in works by Rao, Bates, and Davis.58 59 60 61 Each of these commentators considers the state of water management in Australia to be analogous to the traditional ‘tragedy of the commons’, and a division along state lines to be an inadequate response.

The natural alternative to this division of power among the states is for the power to be referred to the Commonwealth government; ideally, the presence of a single regulatory authority would lead to standards that made actors more accountable for their externalities. In practice, the presence of a single overriding set of regulations would also remove the ‘race to the bottom’ by removing the variations in regulation and management that allowed for more profitable exploitation in the private sector.

A number of commentators have argued that the Commonwealth is in the ideal position to set such national standards;62 63 64 yet absolute centralisation is widely recognised to be impossible under the current reading of Commonwealth powers under s. 51. The Commonwealth lacks the Constitutional authority to unilaterally bring water regulation under its control. As noted above, the Commonwealth’s power under s. 51(xxix) is limited by the existence of treaties or obligations, and the appropriateness of the adaptation of those into domestic law. The remaining powers that have been used to regulate environmental matters lack the breadth to ‘cover the field’ and make Commonwealth regulation of water management exclusive.

It has been argued, in a broader context than effective water management, that an ‘environmental power’ may be appropriate to introduce into the Constitution through a referendum.65 A modern understanding of the environment raises issues of interconnectedness that may necessitate a national solution, one not entertained by the Constitution when written.66 This power is considered impossible to achieve under existing Constitutional law.67 However, advocating such a Constitutional change is unrealistic, given the lack of grassroots or political support for a move and the reluctance of the Australian people to pass amendments through referenda.

Further, it avoids the topic of this essay. Suggesting the removal of federal divisions does not contribute to an understanding of how they impact on environmental

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management. However, centralisation could be effected through a referral of State powers to the Commonwealth, as has occurred with the Water Act 2007, and as entertained by past State governments.68 Given the resilience of State powers, despite the growing capacity of the Commonwealth government to legislate on environmental matters, a wide-ranging deferment seems unlikely. In particular, the kind of deferment that would be necessary for centralised regulatory authority requires some states, particularly Queensland and New South Wales in the case of the Murray-Darling Basin, to set aside the benefits they obtain from the ‘tragedy of the commons’ situation. If such a move stripped benefits from the states, it is unlikely they would consent to creating an effective regulatory body that held primacy, let alone an absolute power held by the Commonwealth. Their considerable interest in retaining water regulation and enjoying the exploitation of negative externalities means that they are likely to fight tooth and nail to keep regulatory authority. The Commonwealth appears to lack the compulsion to pursue regulatory authority under the suite of relevant powers available under section 51, not to mention the legal difficulties that could result if the Commonwealth attempted to use a power such as s. 51(xxix) solely to enact domestic legislation with an unclear or inappropriate adaptation from international obligations.

Therefore, while centralisation and a uniform national plan have their supporters, a large degree of cooperation with the states remains necessary. Further, the benefits of drawing upon local knowledge, competition, and divisions based on sub-national regions make a compelling case for decentralisation as a means of achieving effective management. Centralisation therefore remains an unlikely means by which to reconcile the federal structure with more effective environmental management.

Argument for a Decentralised Approach There are three arguments that support decentralisation of environmental management with regard to water: the intrinsic benefits of a system developed around environmental regions, criticisms of ‘top-down’ regulation, and the value of competition in creating more effective resource management.

The argument for a decentralised system built around environmental regions is arguably the strongest. The practical elements of water management, including regulating access, quality, and sustainability, are most efficiently realised where all stakeholders interested in a particular resource are involved.69 70 71 The underlying theory is that such a structure allows both local knowledge, and a vested interest in the preservation of the resource, to operate to create both an impetus for effective management, and the techniques to achieve it; the NSW system of catchmentbased water sharing plans serves as a pertinent example.

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However, it is arguable that an appropriate deference to regional interests and knowledge can be incorporated into a structure that also draws upon national supervision and guidelines. This may also prevent a system whereby environmental regions aim to stimulate economic growth by lowering their environmental standards in relation to other regions. In other words, the benefits of a regional approach do not exclude the possibility that those regions will be as susceptible to a ‘race to the bottom’ mentality as more arbitrary divisions based on the federal structure.

The criticism of so-called ‘top-down’ administration through a national, uniform program, is directed at the way in which such administration would be employed, rather than the mechanism itself. Particularly, the criticism is that federal management of such a power would be vulnerable to political interests that conflicted with effective management, and a greater interest in political ‘posturing’ rather than enacting effective policies.72 However, this criticism is largely invalid given that those same factors undermine any governmental control over regulation; absent a free-market solution, which has little support among academia except as a passing suggestion,73 it is arguable that these flaws are inevitable side-effects of governmental regulation. Bates acknowledges this response when putting forward the support for decentralisation, and it is echoed in the perspectives taken by Bonyhady and von der Heidt.74 75 Rather than a flaw of Commonwealth uniform regulation, it is a flaw associated with any level of government regulation of the environment.

Lastly, economic theorists have argued that competition between regions can lead to the most effective use of externalities in water management, especially within a federal structure.76 This argument is the most applicable to a federal system, arguing that with a division of powers such as in Australia, the most effective management comes from states competing against one another against a ‘floor’ target set by the Commonwealth. However, this highlights the need for there to be additional regulatory standards beyond those determined within individual states. To compete within a set of standards oriented towards sustainable water management goals drives actors to achieve better management; to compete outside those standards arguably drives states towards economic growth, at the expense of sustainability and conservation, and without any impetus to minimise the negative externalities of improper use of water. In effect, the ‘competition’ can only produce truly effective management, under both national and international conceptions, if it is integrated into a federal system with national standards.

Modifying the Existing Federal balance Neither the arguments for centralisation, nor the arguments for decentralisation, offer a profound criticism of the federal system that underpins Australian water management. Instead, they present the two forms of management that influence federalism, the uniformity and clarity of ‘top-down’ management, and the value obtained by allowing contributions to the structure of management from regional

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and state actors. What is clear is that neither argument, in presenting substantively different structures to federalism, makes a compelling case that such a structure would offer more effective environmental management. Rather, they highlight the benefits of elements already present in a federal system. What is necessary, therefore, is to introduce those elements into the existing federal system, tethered to a more expansive definition of ‘effective water regulation’ that incorporates sustainability and water equality alongside access rights and economic growth.

First, this argument is predicated on the understanding that broad water management standards can be introduced at a national level in order to create a ‘floor’ for regulation.77 This operates to introduce standards that prevent individual actors from pursuing economic growth at the expense of sustainability, or by forcing the effects of their negative externalities on other actors.78 Pursuing this strategy without resorting to Commonwealth power under section 51 requires sufficient leverage to force States to set aside the benefits they would otherwise enjoy from resource exploitation. This impetus was arguably lacking prior to Tasmanian Dams, but in the context of its potential exercise, the Commonwealth may possess sufficient leverage to compel at least some level of national standard. However, this does highlight the difficulties with the Australian federal system: without a clear environmental power, and given the likelihood that modern environmental concerns were not contemplated by the framers, the Commonwealth lacks an express power to assume a supervisory role in resource management. Its capacity to influence states depends largely on the potential limits of other s. 51 powers, and flexible factors such as public opinion and political strength. There is, in other words, no express power around which the Commonwealth can create a set of national standards.

However, commentators have argued that this absence is effectively avoided because of two political trends in recent years: the reluctance of the Commonwealth to create conflict through the exercise of contentious powers, and the State governments’ desire to avoid becoming ineffective in that area under the operation of s.

109 of the Constitution.79 This represents perhaps the greatest flaw in the federal system in Australia; given the almost-universal agreement that an integrated, cooperative agreement under national standards produces the best results,80 81 82 83 the creation of those standards has been left to political compromise rather than legal certainty.

If Australia’s federal structure constitutes an obstacle to effective environmental management, it is in failing to provide an express power by which the Commonwealth can operate in a supervisory role. Arguably, the absence of this power makes the construction of a working relationship between state and Commonwealth actors dependent on changing political factors. In effect, it rests on a fluctuating political climate, and will therefore be vulnerable to a lack of certainty about the roles its actors will play in the long term. Further, state and Commonwealth actors must expend considerable effort in maintaining and adjusting the regulatory bodies

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that they co-operate, rather than being able to focus those energies on improving actual methods and strategies. However, the contemporary federal structure in the wake of Tasmanian Dams has in no way prevented a working relationship between parties. The recent history of water management within Australia seems to indicate not only that a balance can be struck, but that it can also be sustained. The particular nature of that balance is contingent on political trends, popular sentiment, and a number of other factors outside the purview of legal structure and regulation; however, to the extent that federalism obstructed the creation of a regulatory heirarchy, that obstacle seems to have been overcome.

Conclusion Australia’s federal structure has played a fundamental role in shaping the manner in which water has been legally regulated; in effect, the two have become almost inseparable despite substantial changes in the nature of Commonwealth environmental powers. This is indicative of the working relationship between state and Commonwealth actors, which has in many cases established a balance between conflicting interests informed by, but not necessarily obstructed by, the underlying federal structure. The federal structure is not, therefore, the ‘single greatest obstacle’ to effective management; the extent to which actors have been able to work within its confines has illustrated that its effect is largely obscured by contemporary trends in management, and state/Commonwealth relations. Where there are obstructions, they lie outside the structural challenges presented by federalism.

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endnotes 1.

Australian Constitution, ss 51, 107.

2.

James Crawford, ‘The Constitution and the Environment,’ Sydney Law Review (March 1991): 15 3.

Australian Constitution, s 51.

4.

Crawford, ‘The Constitution and the Environment,’ 16.

5.

Amalgamated Society of Engineers v Adelaide Steamship Co. Ltd., (1920), 28 CLR 129.

6.

Commonwealth v Tasmania (1983) HCA 21, 89, in Jacqueline Peel, ‘Climate Change Law: The Emergence of a New Legal Discipline,’ Melbourne University Law Review (2008): 932.

7.

Crawford, ‘The Constitution and the Environment,’ 23.

8.

See e.g. Ibid, 12.

9.

Gary D Meyers, Sonia Potter and Geoff Leane, ‘Promise or Pretence – Compliance with the Intergovernmental Agreement on the Environment: The National Environment Protection Council (Western Australia) Act 1996,’ Murdoch University Electronic Journal of Law (1997): 6.

10. Jacqueline Peel and Lee Godden, ‘Australian Environmental Management: A ‘Dams’ story,’ UNSW Law Journal (2005): 683.

11. Peel, Commonwealth v Tasmania, 932.

12. Gerry Bates, Environmental Law in Australia, (2002), 77.

13. R. Dennis, M. Grudnoff and A. Macintosh, ‘Complementary Climate Change Policies: A Framework for Evaluation,’ The Economic and Labour Relations Review, (2012): 44.

14. Securing Australia’s Water Future: 2011 Assessment,

68

15.

16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

21.

22.

National Water Commission, (September 2011), 3.

Water Audit Monitoring Report 2010-11, Murray-Darling Basin Authority, (2012), 78.

Charles M Macal and Barbara J Broomfield, ‘Point verses Nonpoint Pollution Control Strategies,’ in Environmental Policy Volume III: Water Quality, George S. Tolley, Dan Yaron and Glenn C. Blomquist, (1983), 181.

Tania von der Heidt et al, ‘Managing environmental regulations for the 21st century,’ Managing in the Pacific Century (2012): 3-4.

Macal and Broomfield, Water Audit Monitoring Report 201011, 181.

Stuart Harris and Francis Perkins, ‘Federalism and the Environment: Economic Aspects,’ in ed. R.L. Matthews, Federalism and the Environment (1985): 37.

Note that while WR Lane criticised Harris and Perkins for failing to examine nonphysical, non-immediate spillovers, he did not disagree with the premise that salinity remains the dominant interstate issue in water management – see WR Lane, ‘Economic and Heritage Aspects: Commentary,’ in Federalism and the Environment, Matthews, (1985), 65.

See, eg, Samitha Rao, ‘Reforming the Environment Assessment Process in Victoria,’ National Environment Law Review (2010): 37, in ‘Promise or Pretence,’ Meyers, Potter and Leane, 6.

Keiran Tranter, ‘Return to Green Foundations: Liberation

Nicholas Mills

and Survival,’ Griffith Law Review (1999): 282.

23. Global Secretariat, Water Security for Growth and Sustainability, Global Water Partnership, (2012), 2-3.

24. Peter Rogers and Alan W Hall, Effective Water Governance, Global Water Partnership, (2003), 7-8.

25. ‘Improving the efficiency of water allocation planning’, National Water Commission, accessed 22/5/2012, http:// nwc.gov.au/rnws/planning/ improving-effectiveness.

Murray-Darling Basin Authority, ‘Effective use of Environmental Water’, accessed 22/5/2012, http:// www.mdba.gov.au/draft-basinplan/supporting-documents/ ewp/ewp_ch4/ewp_ch4_2.

26. Ibid.

27. Crawford, ‘The Constitution and the Environment,’ 12.

28. Gary D Meyers, Meyers, Potter and Leane, ‘Promise or Pretence,’ 6.

29. See, eg, Peel and Godden, ‘Australian Environmental Management,’ 674.

30. Crawford, ‘The Constitution and the Environment,’ 12.

31. Peel, ‘Climate Change Law,’ 932.

32. Lee Godden and Jacqueline Peel, ‘The Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (Cth): Dark Sides of Virtue,’ Melbourne University Law Review (2007): 117.

33. Dennis, Grudnoff and Macintosh, Environmental Law in Australia, 44.

34. Brian Galligan, ‘Processes for reforming Australian federalism,’ UNSW Law Journal (2008): 636.

35. Ibid, 635-6.

36.

Crawford, ‘The Constitution and the Environment,’ 13.

37. Bates, Environmental Law in Australia, 73.

38. Peel and Godden, ‘Australian Environmental Management,’ 683.

39. Godden and Peel, ‘The Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (Cth),’ 117.

40. Bates, above n 12, 77, 253, Cheryl Saunders, ‘Political and Constitutional Aspects: Commentary’, from RL Matthews (ed.), Federalism and the Environment, 1985, 34.

41. Bates, Environmental Law in Australia, 76.

42. Crawford, ‘The Constitution and the Environment,’ 15.

43. Peel and Godden, ‘Australian Environmental Management,’ 675, 683.

44. See, e.g., Nick Minchin, Responding to Climate Change: Providing a Policy Framework for a Competitive Australia, (2001), 37.

45. Bates, Environmental Law in Australia, 76 46. Cheryl Saunders, ‘Political and Constitutional Aspects: Commentary,’ in Federalism and the Environment, ed. R L. Matthews, 1985, 34.

47. W R. Lane, ‘Economic and Heritage Aspects: Commentary’, in Federalism and the Environment, ed. R L. Matthews, 1985, 64.

48. See, e.g., Galligan, ‘Processes for reforming Australian federalism,’ 633.

49. See, e.g., Peel and Godden, ‘Australian Environmental Management,’ 683.

50. See, e.g., Meyers, Potter and Leane, ‘Promise or Pretence,’ 6.

51. Godden and Peel, ‘The Environment Protection and

Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (Cth),’ 111.

52. Crawford, ‘The Constitution and the Environment,’ 11.

53. Bates, Environmental Law in Australia, 73.

54. von der Heidt, et al, ‘Managing environmental regulations for the 21st century,’ 5.

55. George S Tolley and Glenn C Blomquist, ‘Water Quality: Overview and Approach,’ in Environmental Policy Volume III: Water Quality, George S Tolley, Dan Yaron, Glenn C Blomquist, 1983, 7.

56. Garrett Hardin, ‘The Tragedy of the Commons,’ Science (1968): 1245.

57. Peel and Godden, ‘Australian Environmental Management,’ 690.

58. Peel and Godden, ‘Australian Environmental Management,’ 690, 59. Rao, ‘Reforming the Environment Assessment Process in Victoria,’ 36-37, 60. Bates, Environmental Law in Australia, 74, 61. Bruce W. Davis, ‘Federalism and Environmental Politics: An Australian Overview,’ in Federalism and the Environment, ed. RL Matthews, 1985, 3.

62. von der Heidt et al, ‘Managing environmental regulations for the 21st century,’ 6.

63. Rao, ‘Reforming the Environment Assessment Process in Victoria,’ 37, 40.

64. Peel, ‘Climate Change Law,’ 975.

65. Peel and Godden, ‘Australian Environmental Management,’ 671, 690.

66. Ibid., 670-1.

67. Crawford, ‘The Constitution and the Environment,’ 11.

68. Bates, Environmental Law in

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Australia, 73.

Harris and Perkins, ‘Federalism and the Environment,’ 36.

70. WR Lane, ‘Economic and Heritage Aspects: Commentary,’ 64.

71. Bates, Environmental Law in Australia, 240-241.

72. Bates, Environmental Law in Australia, 74, Godden and Peel, above n 31, 113.

73. von der Heidt et al, ‘Managing environmental regulations for the 21st century,’ 17.

74. Peel, ‘Climate Change Law,’ 975.

75. von der Heidt et al, ‘Managing environmental regulations for the 21st century,’ 6.

76. Cliff Walsh, from Galligan, above n 32, 639.

77. Harris and Perkins, ‘Federalism and the Environment,’ 39.

78. Peel, ‘Climate Change Law,’ 975.

79. Bates, Environmental Law in Australia, 73.

80. See, eg, Peel, ‘Climate Change Law,’ 975.

81. Bates, Environmental Law in Australia, 73.

82. von der Heidt et al, ‘Managing environmental regulations for the 21st century,’ 7.

83. Meyers, Potter and Leane, ‘Promise or Pretence,’ 12.

69.

69

Ente r in g t h e Whirlp ool Julian O’Donnell

A current under sea Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell He passed the stages of his age and youth Entering the whirlpool.

A muted crunch sounded from below the bow as the rowboat collided with the sand. When the moment played over in his mind afterwards, he was startled again by the sudden stop. It kicked him back into the room as he recalled it; he was in the upstairs study of Cameron Carson’s Parkville home, where he had fallen asleep with his head on the desk.

It was late in November. Monty’s twentieth year.

Twenty minutes earlier he had come up the stairs to find someone shaving in the bathroom. It was William Holden. His face was caked in lather and he ran a small, plastichandled razor around his chin.

“I’m leaving the mo,” he said without looking up.

Once William Holden had disappeared downstairs, Monty had space to sleep. He chose the desk over the Chesterfield. Now regretting this decision, he sat up and curled his knuckle around his eye socket.

After the crunch of the sand, he had idled for a moment under the tepid sun and, looking up, saw vast green against a clear sky. A penin-

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T.S. Eliot

sula – no, an island, standing in the sea. He jumped down from the boat, barefoot, and went on towards the grass. He could hear birds suffusing the landscape with bells and chirps, though he couldn’t see them. There weren’t even trees for them to perch and argue in.

The quaint absence of that vacuous ocean wind took his attention, and he looked to the cliff face on the far end and thought that perhaps it was providing shelter from the draft.

He also saw, beyond the brilliant field, a white shack cushioned in the nook of a steep knoll.

The grass underfoot was still dewy, but cool, minutes from vaporizing. (Of course he wouldn’t have remembered this unequivocally). As he moved further from the shore he heard the bow withdrawing from the sand. A distant scratch of fiberglass behind him, but he knew it wouldn’t go anywhere. It would buoy in the shallows for some minutes and come scratching back.

He drew his head up from the desk, putting aside the isle of green.

The others were down in the

Julian O’Donnell

courtyard; he sat overlooking them through a large glass window. He saw Bobby Raven making his way through the crowd.

But the dream was stubborn in his thoughts. He was back there.

He set for the shack. Its alabaster weatherboards were dotted with two Jacobean windows. Houses were so busy now, he thought. But not this one, it’s quiet. It submitted the grip of the nook.

He traversed the immodest body of green. It was like a clear morning after monsoon. Why hadn’t the house turned green with moss? Someone must be keeping it, he thought. He looked to the eastern bank and saw a solitary ibis, flicking its drenched head in the wake of a dive. Then movement to its left. Squinting, he saw the bobbing heads of dissolute seals, sprawled on the banks or confronting one another with fleshy bosoms.

When he got to the house, the door had been opened. He stood peering into the dull interior and made out the shape of a kitchen, some furniture. An elderly woman sat facing a fire, or a television. If it was a television it wasn’t on, but she faced it still. She fumbled mutely over a knitting spool with her little hands.

He came to the doorframe and it met his forehead. She turned and looked at him.

Back in Parkville, Monty tapped the window and Bobby Raven looked immediately up. He then waved and stuck his index finger up, mouthing wait a second, to Monty. He entered the room a moment later and moved to the window where he brushed it with the tips of his fingers. He then

looked at them and shook the dust loose.

The two friends watched the courtyard below. It was still full of the other undergraduates.

George Steele was conducting a group of younger women right in front of them, giving himself some room before each profound statement. The girl to his right, who was probably Rosie van Patten, managed to get a word in. George let out an eruption of condescending laughter and almost took out the caterer who was trying to margin her way past him. He apologised profusely, took a spring roll and, turning back to the group, let out the last chuckle. Rosie tapped his shoulder with the back of his hand playfully and he brushed her shoulder awkwardly. Someone with her back to the young men upstairs (almost definitely Samantha Wilson) began a patiently awaited response.

Monty watched with a foul taste in his mouth as George started fidgeting with his sleeves and assessing his drink. He had no interest whatsoever in the conversation now that he wasn’t speaking. She finished and he nodded absently before announcing he was dry and disappeared inside, snagging himself on at least three people on his way. His voice was muffled; it formed a constant drone with the others as it travelled through the windowpane.

“So I was talking to Charlie Minson just now,” Bobby began, “and I just straight up asked him: ‘do you actually think anything, or do you just play devil’s advocate.’ He just kind of looked at me.”

Monty nodded and scoffed ab-

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sently.

“I mean we’re standing there, amongst all these gorgeous girls talking about feminism, and he just coughs up this ridiculous comment, may or may not have even mentioned Marxism, and just sounded like a capitalist pig. I mean, I don’t even think he thinks the things he says, do you know what I mean?” Bobby was now pawing at the borders of leather bound books on shelves.

“I know what you mean,” Monty said.

“I love it when gorgeous girls talk about feminism,” Bobby added, overseeing his friend’s agreement. He was now sitting in the Chesterfield, staring out the large window with his hands over his knees.

“Do you know what I just found out?” he continued, then paused as if Monty should even begin to guess.

“I found out that Rachel Walsh is actually a lesbian. Which is odd because I thought I saw her kissing Ben Maxwell last week and the week before.”

Monty raised my eyebrows and swung around to him.

“Is that right?”

“Yeah, sure thing. She told Hayley Hanlon that she just finds it easier to talk to guys or something. Which is ridiculous, really. Not that it makes a whole lot of difference, anyway. That she’s a lesbian, I mean. I mean, I don’t really care.”

Bobby Raven doesn’t usually talk this much. He was drunker than usual.

“I mean lately …” Bobby started but was interrupted by the host, Cam-

72

eron Carson, who came into the room.

At first he didn’t acknowledge them and went directly to the bookshelf where he ran his finger along one row, then another, and finally stopped to pull out the desired edition. For a minute or so he flicked through the pages silently while the young men watched him – they were embarrassed at being caught in the study.

Cameron Carson was a tall, well-built man of twenty-two, a rower.

His father owned the house but had moved to Singapore with his mother once all their children could fend for themselves. He handled women with an ease that most men envied. But he was so damn likable – at least. Monty thought so. He had thick fair hair that he constantly pushed back out of his eyes and was usually overdressed.

He wore khakis, desert boots and a light blue Ralph Lauren shirt tucked into them. A yellow sweater, v-necked, hugged his shoulders. He had probably been dancing. They had heard an incessant bass line thumping its way up the stairs from the outhouse.

“What are you doing?” asked Cameron, not looking up from the book.

The young men exchanged a look and neither of them answered the question. Cameron didn’t persist; he just looked up at them and let out an obnoxious boom of laughter.

“You guys make me laugh,” he said.

“Really? I wasn’t too sure,” said Bobby.

Cameron shook his head, chuckled and continued reading.

“Smart-arse.”

Bobby tilted his head, satisfied

Julian O’Donnell

with the idea of irritating his host.

He leant all the way forward over his knees and let out a loud yawn. He then pretended to be singing along to the music echoing from downstairs.

Cameron watched him from behind the book and shook his head. Monty swung on the swivel chair and feigned admiration of the roof, all of a sudden seeking Cameron’s approval.

“Nice place,” he said, finally.

Cameron looked up from his book and studied Monty’s expression. To Monty’s relief, the comment came off as cordial enough.

“Thanks, Monty,” Cameron said.

“You know it was actually built by my great-grandfather in eighteen-nineties.

Some of it is virtually untouched. I came across it by chance, and only once my father and I were considering buying it did we realise it was the same house. Fancy that. My blood in these very walls!” He slapped the wall and looked at Monty, beckoning further praise.

“Well, you do wonder if that’s coincidence, don’t you?” Monty said.

But he predicted that the comment would stop the conversation in its tracks. Cameron Carson must have agreed, because his smile faded and he returned to his book.

“Yeah, I suppose you do,” he said after a moment.

Bobby sat up suddenly.

“So, what is …” But he was again interrupted as Cameron scoffed and pointed at the book.

“I fucking knew it,” the host exclaimed. Turning on his desert boot heal, he left. They then heard him shout as he skipped audibly down the

stairs.

“Guess what, O’Keefe, you owe me twenty!”

“I wonder if his granddad built the house before or after selling arms to the Kaiser,” said Bobby.

Monty laughed again. He then looked back towards the courtyard; there seemed to be less people than the last time he looked. The group of girls which George Steele had been regimenting five minutes ago had dispersed. George himself was now deep in flirtation with Rosie, who looked up at him with feigned disapproval, pursing her lips.

“They’re all going on somewhere,” said Bobby.

“Will you go?” Monty asked.

“Probably. But Rachel’s a lesbian, so what’s the point?”

Monty turned and laughed. His friend appreciated this.

“Thought you didn’t care.”

“Well, I do. Congratulations.”

“What about Ben Maxwell?”

“Well he’s a bit of a lesbian too,” said Bobby. He was now resting his head on the back of the chair with his eyes closed. He raised a beer bottle to his lips that Monty hadn’t even realised he’d brought into the room.

He must’ve set it down when he first walked in. Monty almost fell off his chair laughing with his last comment, but Bobby didn’t acknowledge it.

Bobby was accidently hilarious.

The clusters left in the courtyard filed quietly away, until only a group of young women were left. They crowded around a friend, who sat propped up by her abandoned seat and very

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drunk. She eyed her helpers vacantly as her head bobbed side to side. She laughed as they tried to pick her up only to have her near-dead weight drop back to the grass. Callum Richardson then came out of the house and saw her sitting there. As he approached the group one of the women turned and warned him not to. He did anyway. His arrival sent the drunk girl, who Monty realised was Gabriela Matherson, into a fit of rage. She raised a finger up at him and he came obediently down to her level, only to be slapped across the face.

Monty turned away from the scene and put his forehead back on the desk. What had we done next? He thought, trying to remember the end of the dream.

He and the old woman had gone up the knoll. Yes. It was steeper than it looked from a distance; halfway up he had to reach out and touch the ground so that he was crawling.

He wondered how she would get up, and looked back. The woman moved slowly up the face, aiding herself with a stick that she planted firmly in the grass before each step. Three quarters of the way up and he was on his chest, pulling himself along like some infantryman. The grass phased itself out and became tough, dry soil, which he had to dig his fingers into in order to pull himself further up the knoll.

Finally he could reach around the cliff edge and hoist himself up so that he could see beyond. But the vision was one of vast obscurity, a colourless void. Random shapes approaching from his periphery crowded his vision.

“Coming? I’m lockin’ up,” said Cameron impatiently.

Bobby jumped to his feet and went to the door, but Monty turned back to the courtyard. Gabriela Matherson was now clawing at Callum Richardson as he retreated across the yard and out of site. She writhed free of her friends grip and fell to the ground sobbing. Then as if stunned, she stiffened, rose to her knees, and heaved a clear stream of vomit on to the concrete path.

“Monty, c’mon,” Cameron repeated, about five young men were now standing at the door, itching to break into the rest of the night. Monty watched Gabriela hold her own hair back, ignoring the pleas from behind him. He felt like he was back on the cliff, his hands around the edge, squinting into the colorless void.

Then, without turning his head, he asked the old woman hastily: “What’s down there?” But no answer came.

The wind returned, and the dust blew into his face and stung his skin.

“Monty! Get up already!” he heard from behind him. But that wasn’t her.

Then he finally did turn, and looked back to where the woman had followed him with her stick. But there were just five young men standing in a doorframe, drunk and impatient.

Cameron Carson reappeared in the doorway. William Holden stood behind him with his meager moustache.

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Julian O’Donnell

“ Throughout [the Vietnam War], the Australian media was more a dependent than an independent variable in the political process... [taking] its cue from American positions ” Rodney Tiffen

“ As [an] institution, the media has generally served the military rather well ” Susan Carruthers

Decisive or Docile?

Australia’s press in the Vietnam War

Caitlin Clifford

“Throughout [the Vietnam War], the Australian media was more a dependant than an independent variable in the political process... [taking] its cue from American positions.”

Rodney Tiffen, 1990 The Vietnam War (1955 – 1975) was a protracted and controversial conflict. Characterised in Australia by a complex political agenda, the war provoked debate with respect to communist expansion, and the exigency of a United States’ alliance.1 From the commitment of an infantry battalion in 1965, Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam War was subject to both fierce debate, and an unprecedented influence from the press. Often described as the “first uncensored war,” editorial commentary in Australian newspapers was “most influential” in framing the domestic, political and social debate about Vietnam.2 Initially, the Australian press followed the government’s line uncritically, propagating a representation of Vietnam that was consistent with Australia’s position as the United States’ junior ally. Between 1965 and 1968, the Australian press was docile, taking its cues exclusively from the Australian Government’s position. It evaluated the Vietnam War in the context of the United States alliance, and embraced Australia’s politically subordinate role. However, the 1968 Tet Offensive induced dissent from Australia’s press and provoked a marked change in the tone of Australia’s coverage. The press reacted to, and reflected, the public’s growing disenchantment with the war, and provided a more critical and balanced coverage. Australia’s Vietnam War policies were questioned, and the government’s subservience to the United States was challenged.

This echoed escalating dissatisfaction with, and criticism of, Australia’s involvement in the war.

Initially, the Australian press was partisan in its coverage of the Vietnam conflict, acting largely as a conduit for the Australian Government’s stance. Scholarship regarding the coverage of the Vietnam War emphasises the reserve, restraint and subservience of Australia’s press. Rodney Tiffen asserts that, between 1965 and 1968, Australian newspapers were “overwhelmingly timid,” and presented a “restricted range of opinion and analysis.”3 Historian, Paul Ham, concurs, positing that the press “strongly backed the government’s commitments.”4 This is consistent with Trish Payne’s observation that Australia’s press “embraced the main tenets of intervention” and promulgated a sensationalised vision of communist expansion.5

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However, Payne extends Ham’s argument to avow that the docility of Australia’s press “ensured the dominance of [g]overnment perspective.”6 Though, Australia’s coverage of the Vietnam War was not uniform, and the national daily, The Australian, was perhaps most critical.

The initial acquiescence of Australia’s press was evidenced cogently in its response to the Menzies’ commitment of a battalion in 1965.7 On 29 April 1965, Menzies, declared that Australia would contribute ground troops to Vietnam to help the United States contain communist expansion in Vietnam – an objective the government deemed vital to Australia’s national security.8 Menzies’ decision received “almost unanimous editorial support,” in which newspapers countenanced the government’s rationale for intervention.9 In its front-page article on 1 May 1965, the Courier Mail endorsed the Australian Government’s rhetoric. It averred that Australia was compelled to provide military support in Vietnam to “aid the United States in stopping the advance of Communism.”10 Also, it propagated the advance of communism as a peril that “threatens us directly.”11 The Bulletin offered a corroboratory standpoint. In its 8 May 1965 issue it postulated that, since the loss of Vietnam would “inevitably be followed by the Communisation of the rest of South-East Asia,” Australia had no alternative but to “contribute…to its defence.”12 Similarly, the Sydney Morning Herald endorsed the government’s decision as “right and inevitable.”13 While employing sensationalised rhetoric that was laden with absolutes, each article provides lucid evidence of the willingness of Australia’s press to give credence to the government’s rationale for invention.

The Australian was the only newspaper to express dissent for Australia’s decision to join America in Vietnam. Labelling the government’s policy as a “reckless decision” that was “wrong...whichever way you look at it,” The Australian invoked a strident critique of Australia’s involvement in Vietnam.14 While this provided a valuable counterpoint to the pervasive vision of uncompromising government support, no newspaper outlet challenged either the assumption that Australia’s security was threatened, or the exigency of the United States’ alliance.15 This had a pernicious effect on the capacity of the Australian media to provide a forum for commentary and analysis.16 Between 1965 and 1968, the Australian press endorsed the government’s rhetoric for intervention and, as a result, became adroit at communicating the basis of Australia’s involvement within the framework of an American alliance.

Deference to the United States alliance became characteristic of Australia’s press coverage, in which representations of the Vietnam War were contingent on Australia’s subsidiary position. Tiffen asserts the Australian presses’ response to the Vietnam War was limited by the “political-cum-journalist pathologies of being a junior ally.” Here, the dual fears of “offending the ally” and being abandoned in the face of an “overwhelming enemy” paralysed any independent questioning of the Vietnam War.17 He suggests that, given the initial acquiescence of the press, the Australian government was able to deflect doubts about the legitimacy of its

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involvement in Vietnam “by invoking the certainty of the American alliance.”18 Historians Anthony Brooks and Frank Frost concur. Frost avers that the media focussed on the “importance and desirability” of the United States’ alliance, rather than on “specific polices and problems”19 – a statement that substantiates Brook’s suggestion that the media was influenced deeply by Australia’s “politically subordinate role.”20 Payne, however, presents a more emphatic argument regarding the role of the United States’ alliance. She posits that with “a few incidental exceptions,” the American alliance was the “philosophical core for Australian press commentary” from which the presses’ assessment of the Australian Government’s policy emanated.21 Deference to the United States alliance was evidenced particularly during Menzies’ commitment of a battalion in 1965.

On both this occasion, and during the Prime Minister Harold Holt’s visit to Washington in 1967, Australian newspapers demonstrated reverence for the United States alliance. In its assessment of Menzies’ decision to escalated involvement in 1965, The West Australian referred explicitly to the United States coalition, noting “Australia is now being called on for support, with deeds as well as words, the policies that inspired our alliance with the US.”22 Similarly, the Herald’s coverage of Holt’s visit to Washington emphasised the closeness and cooperation between Holt and American President Lyndon Johnson. The report underscored the way in which Holt was welcomed as a “brave leader” and “very loyal friend.”23 The propagation of increasingly positive representations of the United States’ alliance bolstered the Australian government’s rhetoric on the Vietnam issue.

However, the 1968 Tet Offensive elicited a seismic shift in the presses’ perceptions of Vietnam. Coupled with the burgeoning inconsistency of the Australian Government’s stance and the mounting public criticism, a more critical and balanced coverage in Australia was achieved. As the magnitude of the Tet Offensive became apparent, optimistic statements espoused by the government with respect to Vietnam were increasingly challenged.24 The media reacted to this growing discontent, and soon after the Tet Offensive “both press and public tended to share and mutually reinforce their [negative] responses to the war.”25 The Age demonstrated this on 2 February 1968, when it emphasised that the “pain of war” must end.26 Media dissent was evident also in commentary from The Canberra Times: “Australia may now look forward to disengagement from this brutalising war of uncertain antecedents and indefinite objectives.”27 Tiffen, however, disputes claims of a more balanced approach in the press, avowing that “it would be ludicrous even to raise the [argument]” that the Australian media offered independent and critical commentary in Vietnam.28 Contesting this view, Payne and Prue Torney-Parlicki maintain that, while the Australian press was initially docile, the Tet Offensive created “changes in the media landscape” whereby coverage of Vietnam became more balanced and objective.29 Payne further suggests that the uncertainty of Australia’s policy direction with respect to Vietnam “buttressed bold commentary” and bolstered growing challenges towards military involvement in Vietnam.”30 A 1968 editorial in The Age

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Caitlin Clifford

provides lucid evidence of bold press commentary, with its statement that “confidence in American tactics and strategy” have been undermined by evidence that they are “ineffectual in practice and mistaken in theory.”31 Increased criticism of Australian foreign policy, provoked by the Tet Offensive, meant that the press was less inhibited by an enduring loyalty to the United States.

According to Rachel Stevens, the Tet Offensive elicited a decisive shift in Australia’s coverage, whereby the press emphasised Australia’s military autonomy to avoid being implicated with the atrocities of United States’ action in Vietnam.32 Assertions that Australia’s foreign policy was independent of United States were evident in reports from The Australian. Its 7 February 1968 editorial stated that “the days of the blank cheque drawn in US favour are over,” while an editorial the on 8 February stressed that the war was “an American dilemma and an American agony.”33 Statements such as these demonstrate the willingness of Australia’s press to act as an independent outlet, rather than a conduit for the Australian Government’s stance.

Australian press coverage of the Vietnam War was voluminous, and had significant influence in providing a framework for Australia’s domestic, political and social debate. Initially, the Australian press was docile, acting largely as a conduit for the Australian Government’s perspective. The need for an American alliance and the fear of communism were the basis from which the media’s assessment of Australian intervention in Vietnam developed. The press embraced Australia’s subsidiary position, and deference to the United States alliance as a justification for Australia’s involvement was prevalent. However, the Tet Offensive in 1968 invoked a seismic shift in the way in which the press perceived the Vietnam War. Reports were more independent, and gave leverage to the public’s criticism of America’s conduct. Also, the press stressed cogently Australia’s independence from the United States. This contradicts Tiffen’s assertion of a dependent press, whose objectivity was limited by Australia’s subsidiary role as the United States’ junior ally.

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endnotes 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

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Frank Frost, Australia’s war in Vietnam, (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1987), 6.

Anthony Funnel, The Media Report, ABC Radio, Melbourne, August 16, 2007.

Rodney Tiffen, ‘The War the Media Lost,’ in Vietnam remembered, ed. Gregory Pemberton (Sydney: Weldon, 1990), 187.

Paul Ham, Vietnam: The Australian War, (Sydney: Harper Collins, 2007), 123.

Trish Payne, War and Words: The Australian Press and the Vietnam War, (Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 2007), 128.

Payne, War and Words, 128 Michael C. Cecil, Mud and Dust: Australian Army Vehicles and Artillery in Vietnam, (Sydney: New Holland Publishers, 2009), 15.

Terry Burstall, Vietnam: the Australian Dilemna, (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1993).

Anthony Brooks, ‘Vietnam and the Australian Press,’

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

21.

22.

23.

24.

Cabbages and kings 13, (1985): 67.

‘We are at War,’ The Courier Mail.

Ibid.

Ham, Vietnam: The Australian War, 124.

‘Australia to help in South Vietnam’, Sydney Morning Herald, 1965.

‘The War that Can’t Be Won,’ The Australian, April 30, 1965.

Payne, War and Words, 2007.

Tiffen, ‘The War the Media Lost,’ 1990.

Ibid, 125.

Ibid, 124.

Frank Frost, Australia’s War in Vietnam, (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1987), 57.

Brooks, ‘Vietnam and the Australian Press,’ 64.

Payne, War and Words, p.265.

‘Australia faces up to reality,’ The West Australian, 1965.

Tiffen, ‘The War the Media Lost’, 174.

John Murphy, Harvest of Fear: A History of Australia’s Vietnam War (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1993).

Caitlin Clifford

25.

26.

27.

28.

29.

30.

31.

32.

33.

Ham, Vietnam: The Australian War, 402.

Ibid, 403.

‘Drift from Vietnam,’ The Canberra Times, 1969.

Tiffen, ‘The War the Media Lost,’ 125.

Prue Parlicki-Torney, Somewhere in Asia, War, Journalism and Australia’s Neighbours 1941 – 75, (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2000), 222; Payne, War and Words, 22.

Payne, War and Words, 22.

Rachel Stevens, ‘Captured

by Kindness: Australian Press Representations of the Vietnam War 1965 – 1970,’ History Australia, Vol. 3, No. 2, (2006): 46-47.

Ibid.

‘Editorial’, The Australian, February 7 1968 cited in Rachel Stevens, ‘Captured by Kindness,’ 46-47.

Spinning Iraq Manipulation and Control of Journalistic Reporting

Alexandra Dworjanyn

“As [an] institution, the media has generally served the military rather well”1 Susan Carruthers For many decades, the mass media has been used as a vital tool for governments in their quest to incite public support for war. This paper seeks to examine the US media’s role in shaping American public opinion on the Iraq War, and will use the pre-war build up, the March 2003 invasion and the initial occupation of Iraq as examples. In the early stages of the Iraq War, the US media was extremely accommodating in rallying public support for military action. This paper will focus on embedded reporters in Iraq, arguing that the nature of embedding fostered skewed reporting in favour of US military action. It will also be argued that the media’s ‘framing’ of Iraq War coverage limited the scope of information and discussion within the news media. Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky’s Propaganda Model will then be applied to the Iraq War. Finally, the influence of the ‘infotainment’ culture of news media over the positive coverage of the war will be investigated. By examining these different elements of reportage on the Iraq War, it can be seen that the US media was instrumental in encouraging widespread public support for the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

The term ‘embedding’ was coined prior to the invasion through Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld’s military public relations campaign. After severely limiting press access for journalists during the first Gulf War, Rumsfeld changed governmental tactics. He created the term ‘embedding’ to refer to journalists that would be assigned to a military unit during the invasion of Iraq.2 This gave journalists access to “front line footage” as well as military protection.3 In such a dangerous context, some viewed embedding journalists to be a necessity.4 Indeed, journalists were ten times more likely to be killed than American or British military during the invasion,5 particularly if they were independent or “unilateral” journalists. While earlier forms of embedding have existed since the American Civil War,6 the scope and “organised fashion” of embedding in ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’ was unprecedented.7 Six hundred US reporters were ‘embedded’ upon the invasion of Iraq, while over two thousand went as unilateral journalists.8 While there are clear benefits to embedded reporting, there are also significant disadvantages.

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The mass embedding of journalists during the Iraq War skewed journalists’ writing away from objective reporting towards military support and propaganda. Former embedded journalist Stephen Farrell claimed that all embedded journalists were familiar with remarks such as “You didn’t hear that”, “You didn’t see that” and “That was off the record” from military personnel. 9 Military operations often require secrecy and an element of surprise. This conflicts with the journalistic goal of transparent reporting. 10 Warfare requires dialogue between the media and the military in order for the military to gain public support at home. 11 Embedding fosters this need, as journalists come to strongly identify with their military units. They “face the same enemy fire” as soldiers do.12 It has been claimed that this is why some embedded journalists “turned a blind eye” to claims about misdeed and possible atrocities involving Western militaries. 13 Indeed, the most well known atrocity of the US military, the Abu Ghraib Prison scandal, was revealed by a unilateral journalist.14 Embedded journalists are more inclined to self-censor and lose sight of their role as impartial observers. This was the strategy behind Rumsfeld’s public relations campaign.

From a practical standpoint, being embedded with the US military meant that reporters were incapable of speaking to Iraqi fighters or ordinary Iraqi citizens. A content analysis conducted by the BBC found that embedded reporters were twice as likely to represent the Iraqi people as welcoming the invasion, rather than as suspicious, reserved or hostile.15 Journalist Anjan Ghosh argues that the embedding procedure “eases one painlessly into accepting the role of promoting,”16 rather than actually covering the war. One study found that coverage of Iraqi invasion remained positive towards the military even when reporting ‘bad news’ concerning unsuccessful military operations, casualties and bombings.17 This clearly demonstrates an un-objective style of reporting by journalists, stemming from a sense of obligation to whom they are reporting on.18 This leads to a discussion of the concept of ‘framing’. The media’s framing of the Iraq War focused on elements that fostered support for the war.19 Observing the war through embedded reporting has been described as “viewing [the war] through a straw.”20 Embedded reports focused on small-scale military action and the information immediately available to reporters.21 High-tech military equipment and communications systems of the US military were often on display, as were the emotional stories of soldiers within their unit.22 Broader issues concerning the validity of going to war, as well as the impact on Iraqi citizens were not as commonly focused on.23 Embedded reports essentially allowed the military to control the content of television reportage on the war. It provided networks with an accessible source of impactive visuals that demonstrated the might of the US military.24 Embedding allowed the government to encourage sanitised coverage of the war.

Scenes of casualties, horror and decimated bodies,25 liberally shown on Arabic news channel Al Jazeera, was not focused upon within embedded reporting.26 The widespread embedding of American journalists in Iraq was part of the Pentagon’s

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framing strategy. This leads one to a discussion of the powerful groups in the US who were interested in ‘framing’ and war propaganda through the media.27 War propaganda was fostered and communicated via the news media in the build up to and invasion stages of the Iraq War. Herman and Chomsky’s Propaganda model, based on a political economy school of thought, claims that all news material must pass through successful ‘filters’ before being presented to the public.

Within war reporting, the most significant of these ‘filters’ is the reliance of media producers on powerful sources of information, in particular, the government.28 Chomsky argues that as the government becomes a vital source of information on wars they conduct, the media is limited in its ability to criticise the government.29 Governments are able to manipulate the media and control public opinion in support of war aims.30 One BBC report found that within nine out of ten references to weapons of mass destruction in the news media prior to the invasion, there was an assumption that Iraq possessed them.31 This demonstrates the significant influence of the government on media reports. Only those with neo-conservative foreign policy interests were inclined to make this false claim. The US government at the time certainly possessed such interests. On September 12th 2001, US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld stated in a cabinet meeting that Iraq should be a “principle target of the first round in the war against terrorism,” with Secretary of State Collin Powel persuading the room that “public opinion has to be prepared before a move against Iraq is possible.”32 From this it can be seen that occupying Iraq was a priority of the government well before the invasion, due to a neo-conservative foreign policy that favoured unilateralist US action on the global stage.33 The success of the ‘Bush PR War’ that followed such discussions can largely be attributed to this compliance of the press.34 Project for the New American Century (PNAC) was an important neo-conservative influence on media content outside of the US government. Herman and Chomsky expect, from a propaganda model, that official sources used in the news to heavily and uncritically feature information from powerful information groups.35 PNAC was a non-profit research group that ‘operated on the margins of national formal political process’, with many of its members powerful conservative politicians, journalists, presidential advisers and cabinet members. Often used as a news source the group published reports, performed research and held conferences on political issues.36 PNAC was majorly supportive of pre-emptive action against those that threaten the US. They were also largely responsible for providing support for the government’s ‘enemy as terrorist’ theme, helping to market and shape fear and dread of terrorism as part of a national identity.37 They strongly supported unilateralism and US military superiority.38 PNAC was a strongly politically affiliated organisation commonly used as a source of ‘neutral’ facts and information about the war. PNAC therefore provides a prime example of Herman and Chomsky’s claim that the purpose of the media is to “defend the agenda of certain privileged groups that dominate domestic society and the state.”39

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The propaganda model does not take into account the media’s criticisms of government action. David Altheide’s ‘War Programming’ model acknowledges that the press can be critical of war as part of a pattern of media reporting that the last several US wars have followed. Criticism generally only strengthens towards the end of wars, with many voices eventually asking, “should we have gone to war in the first place?”40 However, only a minority of those in the media voiced criticism and concern during the initial stages of war.41 US Army General Buford Blount III, for example, was allegedly ‘forced into retirement’ for criticising the Iraq War during his involvement, but has only been in demand by media interviewers for his comments since 2004.42 Despite some criticism in the initial stages of war, the general framing of war by the media was based on positive, pro-war discourse and images. The powerful forces influencing media content encouraged this. It was not until 2005 that world public opinion became overwhelmingly negative about the Iraq War, with thirty-three out of thirty-five countries surveyed in one study holding the view that the Iraq War actually increased the likelihood of terrorist attacks occurring.43 One of the key motivations behind the media’s willingness to support the war was new media corporations’ economic interest in providing entertaining and in-demand news coverage. War is quintessentially newsworthy. It encompasses inherent news values and interests – conflict, violence, deviance, drama and spectacular scenes.44 Therefore, corporations who own news sources are interested in war, as it provides opportunities regarding audience, ratings and revenue. This is an important aspect of the military-media complex – the military rely on news organizations in sharing personnel (military spokespersons become reporters or consultants) for their public relations campaigns, while news organisations seek to provide entertaining coverage.45 The increased audience size that war provides encourages advertisers to invest in news media. This is particularly true for brands that wish to associate themselves with patriotism.46 Media researcher David Altheide claims that reporters instinctually favour stories that sustain news audience’s worldviews about social order and legitimacy.47 Upon the invasion, audiences therefore sought to witness the ‘demonic’ nature of the enemy, the virtues and necessity of waging war and the strength of their government and military,48 which could be demonstrated through acts of heroism and bravery from US soldiers. The rescuing of Private Jessica Lynch in April 2003 provides an example of the use of a ‘heroism’ myth spun by the government and military for PR purposes. Her rescue from an Iraqi hospital, many have claimed, was deliberately staged and dramatised for the cameras.

Stories of her acts of bravery whilst a Prisoner of War were also fabricated. Despite this, her story became a part of the great all-American heroic myth. The Fox News Channel was an important ‘cheerleader’ for the war who heavily perpetuated Lynch’s story.49 Interestingly, one study found that Fox viewers were the least informed about the basic facts of the Iraq war, including the fact that world opinion tended not to support the invasion.50 This reflects the common argument amongst

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academics that the American news media did not present important contextual and background information about the Middle East or Iraq. More economically viable viewing involved ‘dramatic eye-candy’ such as a ‘burning Iraqi tank’ or an ‘inspiring sound bite’ from a US marine firing impressive weapons at Iraqi ‘infidels’. 51 52 Technology allowed for computerised graphics, satellite imagery, military videos of ‘precision strikes’, while military ‘experts’ and ex-personnel discussed the war on ‘chat shows’ consistently voicing support for war efforts.53 All these aspects reinforce the notion that ‘info-tainment’ is what dominates news culture today.54 The public’s right to know is placed at odds with commercial interests and military efforts to control and manipulate the flow of information.55 The US media as a whole was highly supportive of the invasion and initial occupation of Iraq. The military PR strategy of ‘embedding’ journalists was significant in ‘framing’ the war in a positive manner, aiding in the sanitisation of the war coverage. The US media substantiated Herman and Chomsky’s ‘propaganda model’ as well as Altheide’s ‘War Programming’ model, in that media representations and content were proven to be malleable according to the interests and information provided by powerful sources. Finally, war reporting was shown to be commercially viable for news sources as its stories and themes can be manipulated to fit the ‘info-tainment’ culture pervading the media today. Despite new developments in journalism within the Iraq war, reportage fits a long-standing pattern of domestic US media support for military efforts.

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endnotes 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

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Simon Cottle, ‘War Journalism: Disembodied and Embedded’, Mediatised Conflict, 2006 in Media, Politics and Society Reader, 2011, 236.

Bill Katovsky and Timothy Carlson, Embedded: The Media at War in Iraq: An Oral History (Connecticut: The Lyons Press, 2004), IX. Cottle, ‘War Journalism: Disembodied and Embedded,’ 241.

Ibid, 241.

Katovsky and Carlson, VII. Michael Pfau, ‘Embedded reporting during the invasion and occupation of Iraq: how the embedding of journalists affects television news reports,’ Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media (December 2005), accessed October 24, 2011, http://findarticles. com/p/articles/mi_m6836/ is_4_49/ai_n25120983/ pg_13/?tag=content;col1.

Ibid, 7.

Katovsky and Carlson, IX. Stephen Farrell, ‘Embedistan,’ New York Times, June 25, 2010, accessed October 25, 2011, http://atwar.blogs. nytimes.com/2010/06/25/ embedistan-2/.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Katovsky and Carlson, VII. Cottle, 240.

Farrell, ‘Embedistan’.

Pfau, ‘Embedded reporting during the invasion and occupation of Iraq’.

Anjan Ghosh, ‘Iraq: Media Challenge’, Economic and Political Weekly 38, No. 20 (2003), 1933.

Pfau, ‘Embedded reporting

18.

19.

20.

21.

22.

23.

24.

25.

26.

27.

28.

29.

30.

31.

32.

33.

34.

35.

during the invasion and occupation of Iraq’.

Farrell, ‘Embedistan’.

Michael Pfau, ‘Embedded reporting during the invasion and occupation of Iraq’.

David L Altheide, Terrorism and the politics of fear, Lanham: Rowman Altamira, 2006, 630.

Ibid.

Cottle, ‘War Journalism’, 234.

Ibid, 236.

Pfau, ‘Embedded reporting during the invasion and occupation of Iraq’.

Cottle, ‘War Journalism,’ 236.

Matt Wells, ‘Embedded reporters “sanitised” Iraq war,’ The Guardian, November 6, 2003, accessed October 27, 2011, http://www.guardian. co.uk/media/2003/nov/06/ broadcasting.Iraqandthemedia.

Cottle, ‘War Journalism,’ 241.

Neilson Voyne Smith, Noam Chomsky: Ideas and Ideals, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999, 199.

Edward Herman, et al., Media and cultural studies: keyworks, Cornwall: John Wiley & Sons, 2006, 295.

Cottle, ‘War Journalism,’ 233.

Wells, ‘Embedded reporters “sanitised” Iraq war.’

Altheide, Terrorism and the politics of fear, 632.

David Altheide and Jennifer Grimes, ‘War Programming: The Propaganda Project and the Iraq War’, The Sociological Quarterly 46, no. 4, (2005), 619.

Altheide and Grimes, ‘War Programming,’ 617.

Herman et al., Media and

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36.

37.

38.

39.

40.

41.

42.

43.

44.

45.

46.

47.

48.

49.

50.

51.

52.

53.

54.

55.

cultural studies, 305.

Altheide and Grimes, ‘War Programming,’ 625.

Ibid, 626.

Ibid, 624.

Smith, Noam Chomsky, 199.

Altheide, Terrorism and the politics of fear, 158.

Ibid.

Spencer C Tucker, ed., The Encyclopaedia of Middle Eastern Wars: The United States in the Persian Gulf, Afghanistan, and Iraq Conflicts 1, ABCCLIO, (California: LLC, 2010), 225.

‘World Public Says Iraq War has Increased Global Terrorist Threat,’ worldpublicopinion. org, accessed November 4, 2011, http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/incl/printable_version.php?pnt=172.

Cottle, ‘War Journalism,’ 234.

Altheide and Grimes, ‘War Programming,’ 621.

Cottle, ‘War Journalism,’ 237.

Altheide, Terrorism and the politics of fear, 157.

Altheide and Grimes, ‘War Programming,’ 622.

John Kampfner, ‘The truth about Jessica,’ The Guardian, May 15, 2003, accessed October 22, 2011, http://www. guardian.co.uk/world/2003/ may/15/iraq.usa2.

Altheide, Terrorism and the politics of fear, 191.

Katovsky and Carlson, Embedded, XII. Altheide and Grimes, ‘War Programming,’ 617-643.

Altheide, Terrorism and the politics of fear, 158.

Cottle. ‘War Journalism,’ 242.

Ibid, 242.

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“ In a democracy, dissent is an act of faith. ” J. William Fulbright

Economic Controversies (Re-)Solved?

Neville Norman Personal Note: I write this from Cambridge University, where I came for the first time four decades ago after my time in Ormond (1966-1970), with the support and explicit encouragement of Ormond’s Master Davis McCaughey, to his own Cambridge College, Pembroke. I still do much of my own research in Cambridge and it touches closely the theme of underlying controversy I treat in this article, pervading both Britain and Australia. My first publication, A Dose of Economics, using medical-economics analogies, appeared in Ormond Papers, in 1966.

Economic Controversies: The Setting Politically-astute observers of economic debates in Australia must be confused: Liberal parties are advocating direct controls for environmental intervention, rather than unpopular market-based pricing solutions that have been pressed into law in 2012, against vigorous opposition, by the Gillard Government. The Treasurer and all main players in the Gillard Government are advocating fervently a ‘return to surplus’ in federal budgets. They are desperately defending their central policy positions that the ALP budget initiatives will and should place such a fiscal target ahead of tax cuts or social welfare spending more closely associated with traditional Labor governments. Behind all this is the most fundamental controversy within economics: two different visions and versions of how a modern economy works.

The debate has simmered for nearly 80 years, but the origins go back further.

One of many problems with this controversy is that we do not have clear and comprehensible labels to attach to the combatants. Another is that adherents to the more enduring and dominant ‘classical’ approach (as well as ‘neo-classical’ and ‘new classical’ approaches), including most students who study economics and hear little else, do not realize there is an alternative approach. And the alternative economists do as much fighting among themselves, not least on what to call their dissident doctrines, as in protesting against the classicals, who would rather just ignore them.

Names such as Keynesians, Post-Keynesians, Neo-Keynesians, New Keynesians, Heterodox or Marxian economists cover some of the many such descriptions.

Classical economists have no such problem. They need no names other than that of economists, practising the only brand of economics they know. Implicitly much of the alternative approach stems from the writing of John Maynard Keynes, a Cambridge based economist whose 1936 publication, short-titled The General Theory, provided the focus for all ‘alternative’ approaches thereafter.

The Classical Conception and Classical Policy Approach Imagine a world of super-charged economic players: firms, buyers, governments so tuned in that all their decisions were taken with explicit attention to their own goals and perfect information, so all markets were cleared, prices moving to elimi94

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nate any prospective imbalances, including the most sensitive of all: that between demand and provision of labour, so zero unemployment and full capacity use in business existed everywhere, every time. Government needs to keep out, if preserving this overall economic efficiency arrangement is the only goal. That indeed is how this classical view of how economies work is usually presented in early undergraduate textbooks. If market failures arising from strong positions of firms and other players get in the way of making this conception a reality, then classical adherents prescribe a dose of competition laws to regain perfection. Subsidies, grants and certainly stimulus packages are not part of the classical policy agenda. They would merely ‘crowd out’ the private sector, or support a less ‘efficient outcome’.

There is no scope for big-event funding, or any support for innovators or exporters.

At advanced levels of economic teaching, classical adherents do bring in risk and imperfect and the more realistic condition that imperfections are not removed; and in most cases active polices become ‘optimal’, as one might expect. But the ‘pure classical’ view of the world is all that most students who ever study any economics ever get, or hear in the media from the dominant strand of classical economists.

Alternative Viewpoints and Policy Approaches Nonsense, says Keynes and his followers: the classical case is an extreme condition that is seldom ever attained. The ‘normal’ condition is significant slack capacity, decision-taking under recognized uncertainty, endemic mistakes and of course significant and sustained unemployment. In this world, there is scope for official ( a non-pejorative word for ‘government’) stimulating action to boost overall spending, jobs and profits without damaging inflation and creating excess demand or even ‘crowding out’, say the adherents to heterodox economic thinking. Business firms have the power to set most prices, and do this with close attention to their costs, being unlikely to raise their prices just because their order books lengthened with rising demand coming from stimulus packages. Herein lies the core issue that separates the combatants: how the price mechanism works. Is it a safety valve balancing supply and demand, as the classicals maintain, or a reflection of costs rather than demand pressure, as the alternative approaches propound? If it is both, then where and when does one or the other apply and so what?

Why does any of this matter?

If we implement fiscal (budget) or monetary (low interest rates) stimulus and the classical conditions apply, we run the risk of a triple-I problem: more Inflation, Imports and (inevitably as a policy reaction) higher Interest rates. Once only in relatively recent Australian history have we observed this result: in 1973 and early 1974 the new Whitlam Government adopted highly stimulatory policies with large budget deficits and a huge 40% plus growth in government outlays, bringing home the classical fears. Let that warning stand for such circumstances, if they were ever to recur. But failing to adopt stimulus packages when ‘alternative’ conditions apply

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would give rise to another perhaps larger problem: driving down capacity use and driving up unemployment rates, with associated deterioration in purchasing power, confidence and tax receipts. With respect, I say that the U.K., where I closely observe this scene, is solidly in this ‘alternative’ position and has been for most of the time since early 2008: a sluggish, ingrained lack of capacity and purchasing power that needs stimulus not surplus-seeking policies designed for a classical full-capacity boom. Indeed, since May, 2012, the Cameron Government of Britain has been questioning its own policy approach, in response to international agency pronouncements of double-dip recession and the damage down by surplus-seeking prematurely.

Judging who and what is Right We can use a number of tests to seek to resolve these controversies and set out a manifesto for action that responds to the research findings for different countries and times. Our model here is that inspired by Davis McCaughey’s JCR opening address to us all in February 1966: be ‘imaginative’ (a favourite Davis word), seek evidence for contrasting positions and be humble in describing what you have found and what it implies for others. (I have had a certain success in applying the first two of these three imperatives!)

I cite three different forms of test or evidence.

1. By observation, no country known to me failed to adopt some form of stimulus package, consistent with the alternative school and at variance with classical recommendations, in the global financial crisis from about 2008. The Australian (Rudd) measures in 2008 and 2009 were among the largest of any country (relative to its economic size) and ensured that Australia avoided technical recession. China’s measures were even more significant, at 10.5% of gross national product and quickly returning China to 8% annual economic growth. The message is not that the alternative reading is always right: just that it proved to be from about 2008.

Accordingly, classical commentators were silenced. Some were shocked. But this made no difference to what is taught or promulgated. For the UK, still in recession, the message is that only mild stimulus and much deeper cuts in interest rates since 2008 is no answer to a country plunged into a sustained recession.

2. Surveys of businesses and how they actually make their pricing decisions casts different and useful light on the underlying premises embodied in the rival economic approaches. To overcome obvious difficulties with just asking business people what they do, a providential trend in the last 15 years is the massive involvement of influential central banks in this survey process, using their resources, legal powers and inside involvement to get to the bottom of what are private and often confidential decisions. The US, European, English and Australian central banks are all involved and have published comprehensive results. We survey them in Coutts

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and Norman.1 With few exceptions, the alternative school’s approach is found to closely describe the conditions that ‘normally’ apply: there is widespread cost-based pricing and little direct influence from import prices or demand pressure, contrary to conventional theory.

3. Statistical analysis, including econometrics, is now available with spectacular new data. Our findings in 2007 produced few classical cases among the dominating alternative pricing mechanism, consistent with alternative theory.2 It also produced criticism that our product classes were still too broad for pricing at a genuine micro level. Now the gold strike: In the last two years, the UK statistical authority has released the most valuable narrowly-defined price indexes ever presented to researchers, for matched UK, EU and non-EU sources of supply to UK markets.

The data are actual transaction prices rather than list prices and relate only to UK markets, unlike producer price data in almost every other country. Moreover, special processes requiring in-camera production of the data by researchers enable very specific price data to be extracted for public use. We have over 200 specific price series with monthly data from 2008 to the present day showing marked divergence in trends and responses between the three price sources and considerable independence of pricing from demand pressure.

The messages and implications for the debate and economic policy The observations from stimulus policy measures, the surveys and statistical evidence strongly favour the ‘alterative’ view of the economic world. In recent years, they are nearly always at variance with the classical approach that dominates early undergraduate teaching and much policy advice in practice. It seems that the classical conception of highly competitive conditions functioning broadly to clear markets in textbook fashion is a very special case not often encountered: just as Keynes said 76 years ago. This does not mean that classical conditions might not be re-established, as they had been in much of the period 1946-2006. There is an Australian adage for what this implies: (run) horses on the right courses! For UK especially, and perhaps the USA and much of Europe, debt and deficit paranoia is inappropriate and has had the effect of worsening real economic activity. Australia probably has it right, easing off stimulus as fuller employment emerges. Even if our (Australian) policy packages have been broadly right, our direction of teaching and research need attention and redirection.

references Technical Reference: K. Coutts & N.R.Norman, “Global Influences on UK Manufacturing Prices”, European Economic Review, 51 (5) 1209-1222, 2007.

A Useful General Reference: Sheila Dow, “Different Approaches to the Financial Crisis”, Economic Thought, 1:80-93, 2012.

1.

2.

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Ibid, 1209-1222.

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New Thinking on Human Trafficking

Sophie Parr

The piece is in the style of a public policy report. It outlines recommendations in relation to public policy options in relation to human trafficking. The paper proposes evidence based and practical recommendations for implementation. The report is generated in response to a muddled current position in relation to Australian’s human rights responsibilities.

Introduction Over the past two decades we have seen the dissolving of national borders and the rise of global migration movements, prompting a Governmental response to the illegal movement of people across borders. The reforms required to combat the transnational organised crime syndicates came in a rapid response, which outlined domestic counterterrorism procedures and subsequently, an associated strengthening of international cooperation. The issue is integral to human rights standards; the Government’s ability to address this complex transnational issue from a domestic perspective is significant in determining Australia’s place as an international citizen. Further, it requires a multi-faceted approach in public advocacy, funding, governmental action and legislative changes In the government’s view, human trafficking is a “multi-faceted crime with no single solution,”1 and as such the Rudd/Gillard and Howard governments have adopted a broad-based network approach to policy making. A bipartisan response, with significant cooperation from Non-Government Organisations (NGO) and other stakeholders, has aided policy formation. While emphasis had rested on this collaboration, there were still flaws in the implementation and detailing of policy objectives. Subsequent to advancements in official legislation, the Federal Government has established a series of ‘roundtable’ discussions that more accurately reflect the network-based approach.

This paper assesses material from qualitative and quantitative resources, predominantly NGO documentation, academic papers and Government reports. Recognising the complexity of the topic, and in the interest of specificity, human trafficking will be analysed only in a domestic context. Thus, we lack the opportunity for comparative analysis against our engagement with multiple other countries’ foreign policy. The Australian Government’s Action Plan to Eradicate Trafficking in Persons (2004) and subsequent amendments, in particular the Gillard Governments antitrafficking strategy 2010 – 2011 that endeavours to encompass significant public involvement in the policy-making process, will be assessed.2

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Network Approaches to Policy Making Through the Blair government, the rising popularity of ‘third way’ politics as an alternative to existing methods has paved the way for popularity in network governance.3 This has provided a mandate for increased legitimacy of the complete governmental process.4 The Australian Federal Government has adopted this technique as a model supporting a horizontal web of “decentralization and coordination”5 in intergovernmental, nongovernmental and private actors that subsequently serve as an alternative to traditional governmental hierarchical lines of accountability.6 Networks are increasingly viewed as the rational response to the plethora of “wicked social problems”7 that transcend the bounds of statehood and traditional ideas of national interest. This is especially relevant in combating the “dark networks”8 of criminalised trafficking syndicates that are frequently overlooked in trafficking investigations.9 It is of paramount concern that the instruments and proceedings used to combat criminal trafficking networks must be malleable to mirror, and essentially keep one step ahead, of the extensive covert criminal networks undertaking transnational crimes.

A “shared framework of understanding”10 and “common goal”11 dominate policy creation, however, as with networks, a central stakeholder will be at the forefront, in this case the Government. The Government has attempted to remove this with the establishment of ‘roundtable’ discussions, which like its Camelot allusion, promotes an equality of all opinions at the table. With much of the framework already in place, the conversation on future movements of trafficking-related policy grows incrementally, allowing for greater participatory input throughout the entire policy cycle.

Tension exists between the need for tangible outcomes and a clear line of accountability. A networked approach which incorporates multiple actors, including NGOs and public deliberation, is comprehensive, strengthens legitimacy and reflects the values and recommendations of stakeholders. This paper aims to determine if the collaboration and cooperation approach taken by the current Gillard Government equates to more substantive policies, or if it provides a lengthy process not indicative of an integrative approach with non-governmental sectors.

Due to the inherently transnational nature of people trafficking, investigations are typically “long, complex and resource intensive.”12 Thus, it is imperative that collaboration exist multilaterally. More specifically, a close relationship must be established with neighbours in the Asia-Pacific region.13 The ascension of a liberalist international response has typified the international climate, as the increase in

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migration flow continues to mask the illicit trade of people with the intention of debt-bondage.14 Human Trafficking in Context Australian foreign policy has been heavily affected by geographical isolation.15 Human Trafficking came to the forefront of media, and subsequently, political attention in September 2001 when a woman, Puongtong Simaplee, died in Villawood Immigration Detention Centre. She had been categorised as an “illegal immigrant” following the raid on the brothel to which she was trafficked.16 Subsequent to a coronal inquiry, the Parliamentary Joint Committees Inquiry into Trafficking Women for Sexual Servitude was opened.17 Since then the Federal Government has announced numerous committees, conferences and packages showing their commitment to engage in a ‘whole of government’ approach. Significantly, the 2004 launch of the Action Plan to eradicate Trafficking in Persons18 provided solidarity between previous government actions signalling a holistic engagement in four key areas “prevention, detection and investigation, criminal prosecution and victim support.”19 This catapulted a framework to cope with offenders in 2005; the Criminal Code Amendment (Trafficking in Persons Offences) Bill20 which solidified the Government role in domestically combating trafficking through legislation.21 In addition, the position of an Australian Ambassador for People Smuggling Issues was established in 2002.22 Visa Frameworks have gone through a rapid overhaul, amendments to the Trafficking Visa Framework23 on 1st July 2009 gave more immediate certainty about immigration status in Australia. This was a notable result of the Anti-Trafficking Roundtable in 2008, an integrated approach including non-governmental and government stakeholders.24 Furthermore, the government has engaged with other departmental bodies, namely the Australian Federal Police, who have conducted over 270 investigations between 2004 and 2009.25 Australia has comparatively low rates of available convictions due to its position as a destination country. Seven convictions present debate that the issue is not fully established and that public understanding of the issue is low. As such, criminal offences are still treated with caution due to challenges and gaps in the research.26 However, a key shift in policy rhetoric is beginning to occur where “raising community awareness”27 forms as a key tenant to the Gillard government’s anti-trafficking policy response.

Australia has engaged with a number of Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) and United Nations (UN) treaties including ARTIP, COMMIT, TSETT, UNIAP and UNTOC,28 and has become an active player in the region.29 Growing disparities between the developing and developed world increase demand and supply, and drive the international trade.30 Thus the issue must be situated in the rational policy outcomes to address the ILO estimate of 2.45 million people

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trafficked in 2009.31 As a signatory of the UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress, and Punish Trafficking in Persons,32 Australia has agreed to ratify the associated responses.

Data: Policy, Participatory Governance and Public Awareness The Federal Governments Action Policy (2004) has propelled the Gillard Government’s policy in the form of an anti-trafficking strategy that attempts to adopt a networked response to lower the number of victims in Australia who have been trafficked and forced into a debt-bond. Further, it seeks to establish remedies for those criminal networks that appropriate such behaviour. The Gillard Government’s reform to the 2004 Action Policy articulates four central frameworks: “Prevention; detection and investigation; criminal prosecution; and victim support and rehabilitation,”33 in an attempt to address the entirety of the trafficking cycle.

While all aforementioned sectors play an integral role to the formulation and continued state of recommendations, it remains to be questioned whether this network is a true form of participatory governance, and if so, whether this integrative process legitimately addresses the public’s concerns. The $50 million invested in anti-trafficking initiatives since the formulation of the 2004 Action Plan suggested this collaboration has indeed equated to successful reforms.34 Additionally, the Australian Federal Police (AFP) has undertaken 270 investigations into traffickingrelated offences.35 However, this does not encompass all stakeholders, especially a less interested party – the Australian public.

In the campaign, there is a new push to instigate advocacy instruments that aim at the consumer demand which focuses on the first framework set out by Gillard’s reforms, ‘prevention’. Research undertaken by the AIC indicates there is a “lack of understanding of what constitutes trafficking”36 among the Australian public.

Sporadic recording by the Australian Government is revealed by disparate figures of the number of women trafficked in Australia for sexual purposes in any given year.37 Additionally, since 2007 the AFP no longer has regular updates, an ad hoc collation of relevant data is now relied upon.38 Addressing this is a further area recognised by Gillard’s reforms, engaging in coordination between departments.39 The efficacy of the Government response is hindered by the paucity of substantial data. It leaves the quantitative analysis to remain questionable, even supposed facts remain fraught with interpretational data.40 Therefore, more research is required to establish the political ‘scientific’ desire for tangible ‘facts’. This must be supplemented with greater victim engagement, allowing victim and stakeholder narratives to be analysed through qualitative data in the form of case studies, comparative analysis, evaluation and ethnographies. This aids public and governmental knowledge regarding the administration of covert criminal networks.41

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The report prioritises and attempts to engage the lack of a “Community Awareness strategy.”42 This remains relatively unsuccessful, as shown by the University of Queensland Human Trafficking Working Group who, in association with AFP, created an awareness campaign launched on June 1, 2011.43 The approaches of the roundtable discussions recognise the shift to greater engagement and public consultation procedures.44 However, this advertisement of lack of a non-governmental standards weakens the power of the message that is attempting to be portrayed.

The Network Approach in Analysis In accordance with the ‘electoral mandate’, the Australian government have adapted policies to reflect the majority of Australia’s issues with human rights violations.45 On a superficial level, the government’s original response to these issues correlated the policy area with migration and a national security issue. The evolution of historical discourse on people trafficking has reflected an increasingly integrated approach that recognises the value of collective approaches and ‘public’ consultation at each part of the policy process. A number of the aforementioned initiatives have shown a variety of stakeholders’ expertise and recommendations.

The lack of clarity and tendency to overlook policy detail reflects the view that there is a fragile link between policy network structures and implementable policies.46 This suggests initiatives such as the ‘Third Roundtable’, aimed at further discussion on appropriate steps forward, had little impact or influence on eventual policy outcomes.47 It undoubtedly supports the view that non-governmental networks do not produce effective policy makers and should not hold the same weight in the discussion as those who have been elected by the Australian public. Furthermore the direct line of accountability is obstructed, producing lack of transparency and making conflict resolution difficult.48 Both major parties have shown their commitment to the initiative established in 2004 and the subsequent amendments leading to the Gillard Government’s current policy. As such, in the realm of human rights violations, the electoral process should not be required to specifically motivate and dictate the agenda. Instead, it should recognise the benefits of a variety of social actors, in accordance with each group having predetermined equalised power. It does promote the tenuous line in creating participatory governance, in ensuring stakeholders each have appropriate weighting, unlike the current climate debates claim of the emergence of a “greenhouse mafia” dictating the public agenda.49 Unlike the climate debate, there is a relatively sound consensus in the need to combat human trafficking and hence, the NGOs and interest groups employed for consultation by the Gillard Government serve as informational gathering tools advancing the knowledge of the government.50

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Networks to Combat Networks To combat transnational networks, it is imperative to conduct foreign policy according to the logic of “two-level games,”51 whereby domestic constraints dictate foreign policy capabilities. To effectively combat transnational criminal networks, a fluid and flexible model must be adopted where success relies on cooperation and interdependence between various actors and that further allows for greater community engagement in deciding priorities and actions.52 The international system is logically anarchic, as domestically politics generally conforms to hierarchical structure.53 The application of this model in domestic politics has mirrored a liberalist foreign policy outlook that is promoted by the UN as key to attaining long-term social benefits, as can be seen in ASEAN, ARTIP, GAATW, UNIAP and CATW coalitions.54 Through adopting this network policy process throughout the policy cycle, from identification to evaluation processes, we can achieve collective awareness that the state of international affairs is ever-changing and that the foreign policy problems are both complex and inter-connected.55 The National Roundtable is a key structure of policy arising from reforms in 2009 – 2011 which establishes the key role in such stages as policy analysis, policy instrument choice and consultation that show the tangible and “integral”56 role NGO and interdepartmental networks play.57 The multifaceted response allows for the collaboration necessary to combat these “heinous crime[s].”58 Conclusions and Recommendations The anti-trafficking strategy proposed by the Gillard Government should continue to build upon networked structures established during the Howard and Rudd years, in particular those established as part of amendments made to the 2004 Action Plan to Eradicate Trafficking in Persons. So far, it has undoubtedly served as a significant step in recognising the need for fluidity in policies that are consequently able to adapt and mould as our understanding of transnational criminal human trafficking syndicates grows. There are gaps that still remain in the literature and policies that require the government to make stronger policy reform, especially in regards to addressing the consumer demand.

Recommendation 1: Acknowledge ‘human trafficking’ as distinct from ‘human smuggling’, defining it as a crime against a person and not the state.59 Subsequently two ambassadors should be used, due to the predominance of ‘illegal immigration’ rhetoric in the current

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Ambassador for People Smuggling Issues, James Larsen, agenda.60 Recommendation 2: An acknowledgement of the paucity of state borders must be enshrined in legislation, namely the Commonwealth Criminal Code. Amending such policies as: • clarifying the meaning of ‘coercion’ and ‘exploitation’ to a definitional consensus and incorporate servile or forced marriage;61 and • harsher penalties to organisational leaders raising s 271.2 maximum penalty to that of 270.3 (1) “possessing a slave.”62 Recommendation 3: Education should be the key feature in the Gillard reforms to consolidate holistic participatory governance for: • Public: Nodality is required to change public behaviour, where emphasis of policy must shift to the control of the consumer demand, • Thus the ‘communication awareness strategy’63 should incorporate confronting government advertising campaigns,64 • Officials (judicial and executive): Should be efficiently trained to identify and recognise human trafficking.65 Recommendation 4: Public policy must reflect the fluidity of real world policy-making while concurrently noting the rational process and incremental steps that allow the access of these goals. As such, transparency and methodological rigour must control research on trafficking, incorporating exploratory research, and further endeavour to fill the gaps of research knowledge.66 Recommendation 5: Australia has endeavoured to have significant and active bilateral engagement, and should continue to engage in multilateral forums and ASEAN as a framework to combat trafficking.67

endnotes 1.

2.

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The Australian Government: Attorney-General’s Department, People Trafficking, accessed June 3, 2001, http:// www.ag.gov.au/peopletrafficking.

Government Response to the Report of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on the Australian Crime Commission, ‘Inquiry into the trafficking of women for sexual servitude’, tabled on November 9,

3.

4.

5.

2006, 3.

Anthony Giddens, The Third way: the renewal of social democracy, (Cambridge: WileyBlakwell, 1998).

Mark Considine, Making Public Policy: Institutions, Actors, Strategies, (Malden: Polity Press, 2005), 218 – 219.

Scott Robinson, ‘A Decade of Treating Networks Seriously,’ Policy Studies Journal 34, no. 4, (2006): 589.

Sophie Parr

6.

7.

8.

Graham Thompson and Christof Pforr, Policy networks and good governance: a discussion, (Perth: School of Management, Curtin University and Technology, 2005), 2.

Robinson, ‘A Decade of Treating Networks Seriously,’ 593.

Jorg Raab and Brinton Milward, ‘Dark Networks as Problems,’ Journal of Public Administration Research and

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

Theory 13, no. 4, 413 – 439.

Louise Shelley, Human Trafficking: a global perspective, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010).

Robinson, ‘A Decade of Treating Networks Seriously,’ 589-593.

Mark Considine and Jenny Lewis, ‘Bureaucracy, Network or Enterprise? Comparing Models of Governance in Australia, Britain, the Netherlands, and New Zealand,’ Public Administration Review 63, no. 2 (2003): 133.

Statement by the Minister for Home Affairs and Justice the Hon Brendan O’Connor MP, The Government’s Response to People Trafficking, November 22, 2010, 5.

Ibid, 3.

Louise Shelley, Human Trafficking.

Derek McDougall, Australian Foreign Relations: Entering the 21st Century, (Frenchs Forest: Pearson Education, 2009).

Lara Fergus, Trafficking in women for sexual exploitation, (Australian Centre for the Study of Sexual Assault, 2005), 32.

Commonwealth of Australia, ‘Parliamentary Joint Committee on the Australian Crime Commission: Supplementary report to the Inquiry into the trafficking of women for sexual servitude,’ August 2005, accessed June 18, 2011, http://www.aph.gov.au/ senate/committee/acc_ctte/ completed_inquiries/2004-07/ round_table/report/report.pdf.

Fergus, Trafficking in women for sexual exploitation, 32.

The Australian Government, Trafficking in Persons: The Australian Government Response, January 2004 – April 2009: Inaugural Report of the Anti-people Trafficking Interdepartmental Committee, 2009, accessed June 3, 2011, http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/current%20series/ tandi/321-340/tandi338.aspx.

The Australian Government, Criminal Code Amendment (Trafficking in Persons Of-

21.

22.

23.

24.

25.

26.

27.

28.

29.

30.

31.

32.

fences), Act 2005, No. 96, 2005, accessed May 30, 2011, http:// www.comlaw.gov.au/Details/ C2005A00096.

Andrea Parrot and Nina Cummins, Sexual Enslavement of Girls and Women Worldwide, London: Praeger, 2008.

‘Human Trafficking,’ ACTNOW, accessed July 3, 2011, www.actnow.com.au/Issues/ Human_trafficking.aspx.

The Australian Government: Department of Immigration and Citizenship, Changes to the People Trafficking Visa Framework, accessed July 4, 2011, http://www. immi.gov.au/legislation/ amendments/2009/090701/ lc01072009-08.htm.

The Hon Brendan O’Connor MP, The Government’s Response to People Trafficking, 2010, 4.

The Australian Government, Trafficking in Persons.

The Australian Government: Australian Institute of Criminology, ‘Human Trafficking to Australia: A Research Challenge,’ Trends and Issues in Crime and Criminal Justice, No. 338, (2007).

O’Connor, The Government’s Response to People Trafficking, 6.

ARTIP: Asia Regional Cooperation to Prevent People Trafficking Project; COMMIT: Coordination Mekong Ministerial Initiative against Trafficking; TSETT: Transnational Sexual Exploitation and Trafficking Team; UNIAP United Nations Inter-Agency Project on Human Trafficking in the Greater Mekong Sub-region; UNTOC: United Nations Convention on Transnational Organised Crime.

Marie Segrave, Sania Miliivojevic and Sharon Pickering, Sex Trafficking: International context and response, (Devon: William Publishing, 2009).

Shelley, Human Trafficking.

O’Connor, The Government’s Response to People Trafficking, 7.

United Nations, Protocol to

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33.

34.

35.

36.

37.

38.

39.

Prevent, suppress and punish trafficking in persons, especially women and children, supplementing the United Nations convention against transnational organized crime, 2000, accessed from http://www. uncjin.org/Documents/Conventions/dcatoc/final_documents_2/convention_%20 traff_eng.pdf.

O’Connor, The Government’s Response to People Trafficking, 3.

Ibid, 3.

‘Stopping Human Trafficking,’ Australian Federal Police, accessed from http:// www.afp.gov.au/policing/ human-trafficking.aspx.

O’Connor, The Governments Response to People Trafficking, 8.

‘About Trafficking,’ Project Respect, accessed May 20, 2011, www.projectrespect. org.au Cited in Australia Parliamentary Joint Committee on the Australian Crime Commission, Inquiry into the trafficking of women for sexual servitude, (Canberra: Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia, 2004), para 2.65.

Nicola Piper, ‘A Problem by a Different Name? A Review of Research on Trafficking in South-East Asia and Oceania,’ in Data and Research on Human Trafficking: A Global Survey, Frank Laczko and Elzbieta Godziak, (Geneva: IOM, 2003), 203 at 219.

Fiona David, ‘Human Smuggling and Trafficking: An overview of the Response at the Federal Level,’ Australian Institute of Criminiology Research and Public Policy Series, no. 24, (2000).

‘Statistics and other data,’ University of Queensland, http://www.law.uq.edu. au/human-traffickingstatistics#nongovsources.

Brendan O’connor, ‘Australia leading anti-human trafficking action,’ Australian Labor Party News, November 19, 2010, accessed from http://www.alp. org.au/federal-government/

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40.

41.

42.

43.

44.

45.

46.

47.

48.

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news/australia-leading-antihuman-traffickgin-action/.

Andreas Scholenhardt, ‘Human Trafficking still lurking in the shadows,’ Lawyers Weekly, http://www. lawyersweekly.com.au/blogs/ opinion/archive/2008/10/17/ human-trafficking-stilllurking-in-the-shadows.aspx, posted 2008.

Elzbeitha Gozdziak and Micah Bump, Data and Research on Human Trafficking: Bibliography of research based literature, (Georgetown university: Institute for the study of international migration, 2008), 10, accessed from http://www12.georgetown. edu/sfs/isim/Publications/ ElzPubs/NIJ_BIB_FINAL_ REPORT-1.pdf.

Tom Clarke et. al, Performance Audit Report, no 30, 2008 – 2009, management of the Australian Government’s action plan to eradicate trafficking in persons, (Canberra: Australian National Audit Office, 2009), 8, accessed from http://www. anao.gov.au/uploads/documents/2008-09_Audit_Report_30.pdf.

Melissa Curley, ‘New Campaign to raise awareness about human trafficking,’ UQ News, May 30, 2011, accessed from http://www.uq.edu.au/ news/?article=23237.

Brian W. Head, ‘Community Engagement: Participation on Whose Terms?,’ Australian Journal of Politcial Science 42, no. 3, (September): 441.

Alan Fenna, Australian Public Policy, 2ed, (Frenchs Forest: Pearson Education, 2004), chapter 1.

Michael Howlett, ‘Do Networks Matter? Linking Policy Network Structures to policy outcomes: evidence from Four Canadian policy sectors,’ Canadian Journal of Political Science 35, no. 2, (2002).

Joshua B. Forrest, ‘Networks in the Policy Process: An international perspective,’ International Journal of Public Administration 26, no. 6, 591 – 607.

Wayne Cameron, ‘Public Ac-

49.

50.

51.

52.

53.

54.

55.

56.

57.

countability: Effectiveness, equity, ethics,’ Australian Journal of Public Administration 63, no. 4, (2004): 59 – 67.

Simon Butler, ‘Australia’s Greenhouse Mafia – A New Dirty Dozen,’ GreenLeft Thinktank, June 21, 2009, accessed from http://www. greenleft.org.au/node/41893.

Wolfgang Reinicke, ‘The Other World Wide Web: Global Public Policy Networks,’ Foreign Policy, no. 117, 1999, 47.

Robert D. Putnam, ‘Diplomacy and domestic politics: the logic of two-level games,’ International Organization 42, no. 3, 1988, 427-460.

Head, ‘Community Engagement,’ 441 – 443.

Allan Gyngell and Michael Wesley, Making Australian Foreign Policy, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

GAATW: Global Alliance Against Trafficking in Women; CATW: Coalition Against Trafficking in Women.

Head, ‘Community Engagement,’ 443.

In linking the roles of such agencies through the Roundtable Discussion set to convene for a third time in 2011 with Australian Slavery Project, Austalian Catholic Religious Against Trafficking in Humans, Project Respect, Scarlet Alliance, NSW Rape Crisis Centre, Australian Government Attorney General’s Department, Department of Immigration and Citizenship (DIAC) and Australian Human Rights Commission.

‘2010 Guidelines for NGOs: Working with Trafficked People: Working Group of National Roundtable,’ Commonwealth of Australia, accessed May 20, 2011, www. ag.gov.au/cca.

Intergovernmental departments include such members as the Attorney Generals Department, The Australian Crime Commission, AFP, Australian Institute of Crimi-

Sophie Parr

58.

59.

60.

61.

62.

63.

64.

65.

66.

67.

nology, Australian Agency for International Development, The Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions, DIAC and Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) with the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet.

O’Connor, The Government’s Response to People Trafficking, 8.

Melissa Stewart, Susan Mizrahi and Nell Kennon, World Vision Policy Recommendations – Trafficking in Persons, (World Vision Publication, 2009), 13, accessed from http://www. worldvision.com.au/Libraries/3_3_1_Human_rights_ and_trafficking_PDF_reports/ Policy_Recommendations_-_ Trafficking_in_Persons.pdf.

DFAT, ‘Mr James Larsen, Ambassador for People Smuggling Issues for Australia,’ accessed June 22, 2011, http:// www.dfat.gov.au/homs/aups. html.

‘Current Priorities,’ AntiSlavery Project, accessed from http://www.antislavery.org. au/what-we-do/currentpriorities.html.

Commonwealth Criminal Code, 1995, s 270.3 Slavery offences, 278.

Australian Government, Australian government antipeople trafficking strategy, Fact Sheet, 2009.

‘Trafficking – Torture, by any other name,’ TheBodyShopUK, accessed May 29, 2011, http://www.youtube. com/1990s, (Victoria: Melbourne University Press, 1991). Stewart, World Vision Policy Recommendations – Trafficking in Persons, 6 – 10.watch?v=BdW05BC4emw.

‘Current Priorities,’ AntiSlavery Project.

Judy Putt, ‘Human Trafficking to Australia: a Research Challenge,’ in Trends and Issues in Crime and Criminal Justice, No. 338, (2007).

Gareth Evans & Bruce Grant, Australia’s Foreign Relations: in the world of the 1990s, (Victoria: Melbourne University Press, 1991).

s p u t e

&

B u r e a u

Gavrilo Grabovac

spute I conspute them conspute them hyper-fecunded rutes cunfend them his rebus fructibus * Bureau Vagabundus was directed to a wooden bench where it became apparent one might sit down whilst one waited to be called not desiring to appear as if he were refusing the hospitality which they had so graciously provisioned him with in the form of this wooden bench he sat down it was then that he apprehended the heralding shadow of a form of the most pure tedium about to overtake him should he continue to endure to sit on this wooden bench for very much longer thus springing up he commenced a vigorous pacing up and down the corridor of the most fanciful sort first he put one leg forward then the other it was really most peculiar. * fecksion meretrix avant-garde campiuze kitsch quatsch subversive cupola deponent Locustax pilfer initials “ignoramus et ignorabimus� nude reclined in the park Ration of Orchestra Musicians Alarms * Terror drama!

Sun heralds bomb!

Shoe Goblin emergency advertisement no material letters ventilation cycles; dance! verification scientific become no truth language technology of aesthetic post efficiency performance proof but beautiful knowledge condition verification games the rich games just modern efficiency no efficiency optimisation of wealth measure truth does no to etc. no money machines and the pertain not of the true

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Violence in Vain

Consequences of the intrusion of the Real Laura Berthold

Violence is an inevitable aspect of the human condition. It is a response to the vulnerability of being out of control. In particular, violence “is a protective move in defense of the fortress imaginary ego,”1 with this so-called ‘fortress’ constituting the ‘body ideal’ described by Lacan’s mirror stage. For an autonomous body such as the state, this body ideal is manifest in the notion of the ideal nation, with acts of terror constituting the intrusion of the Real, and a threat to the ideal. This paper will explore the notion of the ideal nation, and will consider the inherent link that exists between the threat to the ideal, and aggression. Specifically, it will examine the nature of the War on Terror as being a response to a threat to the United States’ body ideal, and explore, more broadly, the conception of violence as an expression of the Freudian ‘death instinct’, and an attempt to fix meaning. Finally, this paper will argue that violence is merely one approach to confronting the threat to the body ideal. The use of images and symbols, such as those seen in Northern Ireland, constitute an alternative means to imagining the ideal state, and resisting the intrusion of the Real.

An important stage in the psychoanalytic development of the human infant, the mirror stage can be understood “as an identification…namely, the transformation that takes place in the subject when he assumes an image.”2 Infatuated with its image in the mirror, the human infant perceives itself as “an integrated, whole, competent body, but experiences itself as an uncoordinated, incompetent, body in pieces.”3 Nevertheless, the infant embraces its own misrecognition and demands that others see it as it sees itself, as the embodiment of the ideal-I. This desirable mirrored body image becomes “a source of identity and integrity”4 for the infant, and constitutes the body ideal. For the nation, this body ideal is imagined as the ideal nation and this imagined nation is constantly under threat from the Other – whether in the form of the terrorist, or even in other ideas of nationhood.

This experience of the Other (in this paper, also termed the Real), works to destabilise the state’s experience “as occupying a secure and legitimate place in the world,”5 and brings about incidents where the state lacks control of its imagined body ideal. For Lacan, it is these experiences of the Real that render aggression inherently linked with the mirror stage; the threat of the other intrudes on the body ideal and must be utterly destroyed if the image of the ideal-I is to be preserved. As with the infant, the nation demands that others see it in the light of its imagined

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ideal and

refuses to “accept its position in an intersubjective world as one among many.”6 The state hence refuses to acknowledge the failure of the ideal-I to exist. Experiences of the Real constitute a loss of control of this body ideal and spawn aggression; the state fights violently to experience its body ideal in both imagination and reality, and demands that the Other see the nation in its idealised form.

Yet what is the Real? For an autonomous body, the notion of the Real “is ultimately another name for the Void.”7 It is that which cannot be symbolised in the symbolic universe of the ideal-I. In the modern state, the Real can emerge in the form of the terrorist, for he does not behave as the ‘good citizen’ imagined in the ideal state, and instead constitutes a destabilising force to the ideal. In an attempt to regain control of the body ideal, such a destabilising force is both devalued and refused by the state, and “the pursuit of the Real…equals total annihilation.”8 The desire to destroy any threat to the subject’s body ideal demonstrates the fundamen-

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tally aggressive nature of the mirror stage and the imagined body ideal.

For the United States, “the World Trade Centre explosions were the intrusion of the Real, which shattered [their] illusory Sphere.”9 Accordingly, the ensuing War on Terror constituted an attempt to destroy the threat of the Real, as embodied by terrorism, and to restore the image of the ideal nation. A fundamentally humiliating experience for the United States, 9/11 completely shattered the American myth of invincibility, and represented an experience where the most powerful nation in the world was completely out of control. Previously perceiving itself “as an island exempted from this kind of violence,”10 the events of 9/11 intruded into America’s imagined body ideal, with George W. Bush’s declaration of a War on Terror demonstrating a violent attempt to regain control over this ideal. The violence of the War on Terror can be understood as an attempt to utterly destroy terrorism, and thus the threat of the Real, exemplified in George W. Bush’s declaration on 20 September 2001 that “our war on terror begins with al-Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.”11 The assertion that terrorism must be wholly destroyed is an expression of the need to annihilate all that presents as a threat to the imagined body ideal. Hence, it demonstrates the violent nature of those means perceived as solutions to threats to the realisation of the ideal nation.

While it is evident that violent solutions were indeed used by the United States to overcome the threat of the Real to the body ideal, the question remains: why violence? In the case of the United States and the War on Terror, there are two reasons explaining the use of violence to destroy the Real. Firstly, the notion of American ‘innocence’ was severely shaken by 9/11. This idea of innocence is grounded deeply in American history, for “America’s founders saw themselves creating a city on a hill which would be free of European corruption,”12 with the United States perceiving itself as “a place of innocence and renewal.”13 9/11 shattered this construction, and the nation was corrupted by terror, with violence perceived as the only course of action that could possibly return America to its ideal state of innocence. As Zizek suggests, the United States held the perception that “once the violent work of purification [was] done, the New Man [would] emerge ex nihilo, freed from the filth of the past corruption.”14 By launching a violent attack against the terrorists of 9/11, America would become an innocent nation once more, and the state could again be imagined in its ideal form.

The use of violence can be understood as an expression of what Freud described as the death instinct. At work in all creatures, the death instinct is an attempt to fix meaning by reducing something to an inanimate form, thus ‘killing’ it in both flesh and representation and destroying it utterly. In the case of the body ideal, the death instinct is understood as an attempt to fix the meaning of the Real, thus destroying the threat of the unknown presented by the other. It is this uncertainty that sits at the heart of the question of terror. The fact that it is not easily defined is precisely

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what classifies terror as an expression of the Real. It cannot be controlled by the state, and thus is rendered a destabilising force against the body ideal. By waging a violent war against ‘terror’, with an aim to “stop it, eliminate it, and destroy it where it grows,”15 the United States’ attempted to fix the meaning of the word, and thus guard against experiences that may threaten the imagined ideal.

Furthermore, the notion of the death instinct, the desire to ‘kill’ something in flesh and representation, can also be understood as an attempt to create social memory, with such a notion rendering history a “synchronic closure”16 where the Real cannot infiltrate. This idea is exemplified by the case of Northern Ireland, where “violence has become the premier…medium for inscribing social memory onto the political landscape.”17 Violence provides a finitude that refuses the intrusion of the Real, with such finitude serving to create a collective memory that embodies the ideal-I. Particularly within the Republican cause, violence serves as the primary vehicle to imagining the ideal Ireland, with Feldman suggesting that “the Republican dead may be the ideal and possibly the only citizens of the imagined national entity of a United Ireland.”18 Hence violence serves many roles in preserving the imagined ideal, for it functions to fix meaning and prevent intrusions of the Real that render the nation out of control and unable to imagine the ideal nation.

While it is evident that violence does function as a solution to intrusions of the Real on the body ideal, it is not the only means by which the state can imagine the ideal-I. In particular, images in the form of murals and memorials can be used to fix meaning and social memory and resist those experiences that devalue the body ideal. Hence, public imagery can function as an alternative expression of the death instinct. In Northern Ireland, “historical memory is a mass-produced commodity… written onto the built environment—by place names [and] memorials.”19 With meaning fixed in such a way that change is refused, the image of the ideal nation endures. The case of Bobby Sands is particularly important in illustrating this idea, for his dead body represents Northern Ireland in its ideal image, and symbolises an innocent nation. Representing a nation wasting away, but prepared to die for the cause, the martyred body of Bobby Sands captures and symbolises an ideal Ireland. Etched into the collective memory of the Republican Irish, the image of Bobby Sands’ body serves to “freeze the historical process, making it impossible for individuals and groups to enter into any kind of change.”20 Symbols and murals are inanimate, face no threat from the Other, and they represent viable alternatives to violence, for resisting and restoring the body ideal.

Yet, while it is evident that both violence and images serve to refuse the intrusion of the Real and restore control to the nation imagining the body ideal, we must ask ourselves, can there ever be a ‘solution’ in the ultimate sense of the word? The answer is no, for the Real is a persistent threat that will never completely leave us.

Understood as ‘that which cannot be defined,’ the Real is something that is forever changing, and something that will be forever present as a threat to the ideal as

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imagined by the nation. As Zizek attests, “to succumb to the urge to act now and retaliate means precisely to avoid confronting the true dimensions of what occurred on September 11.”21 Violent retaliation can never achieve its aim of securing the ideal, as the nation will forever be subject to experiences that challenge the body ideal.

Thus it is evident that problems do arise when the body ideal imagined by the state is threatened by intrusions of the Real, with solutions to these problems often presenting as violent behaviour. These violent solutions can be understood as a product of aggression spawned by the mirror stage, whereby the state undertakes violent actions against that which threatens its imagined ideal. These violent solutions are an expression of the death instinct, whereby the killing occurs in both flesh and representation, so as to fix meaning and destroy the threat of the unknown. Nevertheless, violence exists as only one solution to problems arising from the threat to the body ideal, with the use of symbols and imagery constituting an alternative method of fixing meaning, and resisting the intrusion of Real. Yet, while both violence and the use of imagery exist as solutions to overcoming the threat of the Real, both are carried out in vain, for the threat of the Real can never be totally destroyed, and the ideal nation, as imagined by the state, can never be truly realised.

endnotes 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

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Debra Bergoffen, ‘Between the Ethics and Politics of Innocence,’ Australian Feminist Law Journal, 24 June 2006, 57.

Jaques Lacan, ‘The mirror stage as formative of the function of the I as revealed in psychoanalytical experience,’ in Ecrits: The First Complete Edition in English, trans.

Bruce Fink w.w. Norton & Company: New York, 2006, first published in French 1966, Seminar delivered July 17, 1949, 76.

Bergoffen, ‘Between the Ethics and Politics of Innocence,’ 53.

Ibid.

Ibid., 51.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

Ibid., 53.

Slavoj Zizek, ‘Reflections on WTC,’ Welcome to the Desert of the Real, Verso London, 2002.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid.

George Bush, Address to the Nation, September 20, 2001. http://www.presidentialrhetoric.com/speeches/09.20.01. html.

Bergoffen, ‘Between the Ethics and Politics of Innocence,’ 52.

Ibid.

Zizek, ‘Reflections on WTC.’ Bush, Address to the Nation.

Allen Feldman, ‘Political Terror and the Technologies of Memory: Excuse, Sacrifice,

Laura Berthold

17.

18.

19.

20.

21.

Commodification, and Actuarial Moralities,’ Radical History Review Issue 85 (Winter 2003): 66.

Ibid., 61.

Ibid., 67.

Ibid., 60.

Ibid., 60.

Zizek, ‘Reflections on WTC.’ Image Credit. Peress, G, 1972, William Street, Derry, Norethern Ireland, 30th Janurary 1972, Viewed 7th October 2012, < http:// all-that-is-interesting.com/ incredible-photo-irelandsbloody-sunday >.

â&#x20AC;&#x153; A look at the past reminds us of how great is the distance, and how short, over which we have come. The past makes us ask what we have done with us. It makes us ask whether our very achievements are not ironical counterpoint and contrast to our fundamental failures. â&#x20AC;?

Robert Penn Warren

Reconceptualising ‘exposure’ Roman attitudes towards the practice of abandonment Hilary Binks Introduction The abandonment or ‘exposure’ of infants was a widely socially accepted method of birth control for the majority of Roman history.1 2 3 However, most modern valuessystems decisively deem the abandonment of infants and young children an abhorrent crime.4 As such, contemporary Roman scholars have produced a convoluted assessment on Roman practices of child abandonment which does not adequately emphasise Roman attitudes.5 6 This essay will examine the complex mental constructs in Roman society surrounding practices of abandonment. It will be argued that the overarching construct, which reinforces the validity of abandonment, primarily acts as a positive distancing mechanism, allowing those who abandon their children to both seek consolidation from survival mythology and actively detach from the potentially fatal act.

The euphemising discourse surrounding mythological and actual instances of abandonment will be analysed in an array of Roman sources. The distancing and quixotic traits in these sources will be contrasted with textual depictions of child murder and filicide to demonstrate the effectiveness of the abandonment construct.

Finally, it is the evidence attesting to the value and emotional investment Romans placed in the children who were not abandoned that produces the most compelling argument for a complex mental construct to cope with the reality of abandonment.

The period of interest is the Roman imperial era. However, child abandonment had been practiced in a number of different societies throughout the Mediterranean well before the first century CE.7 8 9 10 The iconographical engagement with young children in the imperial period results in the majority of the literary evidence for abandonment attitudes being situated in this era.11 This evidence can be placed in contrast to the changed attitudes towards abandonment in the later imperial period, under Christian emperors such as Constantine and Valentinian.12 13 This third century shift was not so much that Roman attitudes towards practices of abandonment had changed, rather that the shift in the religious stance of the ruling elite required a reflection in the law.14 On a very basic level, it is clear that abandonment was a socially accepted method of birth control in Rome for the majority of the imperial period. Through the analysis of Roman sources prior to the conversion

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to Christianity, we are able to reconstruct the Roman psychological mechanisms which allowed practices of abandonment to be accepted.

The study of ancient perceptions of violence towards young children is of crucial interest to modern society. Practices of infanticide, child abuse and neglect have been documented throughout history; studies in pre-modern England and France and third world countries today (in particular, India) have demonstrated the correlation between low living standards and child victimisation.15 Through analysing and understanding Roman mental constructs that condone practices such as abandonment and their development over time, it may be possible to construct new solutions for alleviating modern crises of child maltreatment.

Distance and survival: a euphemistic framework Discussions of child abandonment in the surviving Roman texts are scarce.16 The majority of discussions occur in later Christian and Jewish texts, which are highly critical and not useful in exposing the Roman attitude.17 18 19 The majority of occurrences mentioned are mythological, which is highly significant in itself. However, there are brief references and inferences to actual practices of abandonment across a number of literary genres. The clearest example can be seen in the correspondence between Pliny and the emperor Trajan [Pliny Epistulae 10.65-6, 72]. Pliny writes in regard to the legal stance “concerning the state and maintenance of deserted children” in Bithynia [Plin. Ep. 10.66]. His description of the Bithynian situation implies that firstly, this practice also occurs in Rome and secondly, that it is a common enough occurrence to merit legal attention: “children who were exposed by their parents, and afterwards preserved by others” [Plin. Ep. 10.72]. The existence of his letter to the emperor in itself suggests that abandonment is an acknowledged practice both in Asia Minor and Roman Italy. This is further supported by the description of the situation as “a very considerable question…in which the whole province is interested” [Plin. Ep. 10.65].

Whilst the interest of “the whole province” may be an exaggeration intended to justify correspondence to the emperor, Trajan’s response indicates an acute awareness of the situation through previous dialogue: “The question… has been frequently discussed.”[Plin. Ep. 10.70]. Similarly, both Trajan and Pliny refer to various legal works dealing with similar cases, suggesting that while the social and legal ramifications of abandonment (or rather, ‘rescuing’ as a possible outcome of abandonment) have been discussed at various points over the previous century, the practice is implicitly accepted. It could be inferred of Trajan’s comment “I do not find in the constitutions of the princes, my predecessors, any general regulation upon this head, extending to all the provinces” [Plin. Ep. 10.74] that legislation involving abandonment or its consequences (or both) existed.

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The references to the discussions surrounding this issue indicate an awareness as well as an acceptance of abandonment and its social consequences on the highest level of Roman society. As it can be inferred that the actual act of abandonment was most likely carried out by women in the family or slaves, the awareness of Trajan, Pliny and other elite Roman men to this matter could attest to an engagement in a Roman collective ideology which permeates somewhat through class and gender divisions. The familiarity, tone and implications present in the following sources further reinforce notions of distance and survival.

Juvenal employs the awareness of his audience not simply of the occurrence of abandonment, but also the place in Satire VI: At the foul latrine; the little Salian priests, the high-priests so often Acquired from there; to bear, illegitimately, the Scauri family name.

Shameless Fortune lingers there at night, smiling on naked infants: She warms them at her breast, and clasps them in her embrace, then Hands them over to the most exalted of houses…

Juvenal Satires 6.603-9 The joke of this stanza (that priests and aristocrats are often rescued victims of abandonment) is instructive into both practices and attitudes towards exposure. On a basic level, Laes interprets ‘the foul latrine’ as referring to water tanks near the aqueducts, a site identified by archaeologists as a place for abandonment, as well as other “well-known locations for deposit of abandoned babies” such as temples, rubbish heaps and the forum olitorium.20 However, Satire VI also engages in the overarching ‘survival mythology’ framework that surrounds actual practices of abandonment. The description of infants “so often acquired from there” implies that the majority of children abandoned at the “foul latrine” are found and ‘taken in’ to be adopted into the priesthood. The alternative future identified is adoption into “the most exalted of houses,” an aristocratic family. This optimistic outlook is emblematic of the structure of Roman attitudes towards abandonment; that the majority of infants do survive through adoption.

The reality, as attested to by both legal evidence as discussed above and modern demographic studies, was that slave traders or people who desired slaves would more likely adopt an abandoned baby and raise them as a slave. It could be inferred through the use of ‘Fortune’ that Juvenal is attempting to be ironic, suggesting that not every “naked infant” is ‘fortunate’ enough to be rescued. However, Juvenal’s characterisation of the metaphorical ‘Fortune’ as a mother figure to abandoned infants “warm[ing] them at her breast” and “clasp[ing] them in her embrace,” could also attest to the irrepressible desire of abandoning parents to believe that their child was going to be cared for. Similarly, Suetonius attests to two teachers who were abandoned as infants, ‘rescued’ and then enslaved [Suetonius De gramm.

21]. In an interesting comment on motivations behind abandonment, Suetonius

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attributes the rejection of one infant “because of discordia between his parents” [Suetonius De gramm. 7, 21]. However, it is his mention of two separate cases of abandoned infants being rescued and cared for (albeit as slaves) that ultimately reinforces the inherently mythic survival belief.

Tacitus makes brief mention of the Germanic attitudes towards abandonment or infanticide, however it is useful primarily in its implications of social acceptance of abandonment in Rome (a converse attitude to the Germani): “To limit the increase of children, or put to death any of the later progeny is accounted infamous” [Tacitus Germania 19.16-7]. Other cultures, notably Jewish and Egyptian, did not openly practice child abandonment as the Romans did. However, the lack of Roman examination attests to their inability to see past the harsh necessity that required the practice.

Plutarch demonstrates his belief that lower class families, stricken by poverty, consistently resort to abandonment: “the poor do not bring up their children… they cannot bear to transmit poverty to them” (Plut. De amore prolis 5). However, a valuable piece of first hand evidence from a source that is not wealthy and aristocratic attests to an attitude quite different from Plutarch’s suggestion. A letter from Hilarion to his pregnant wife preserved on papyrus: “I am still in Alexandria... I beg and plead with you to take care of our little child, and as soon as we receive wages, I will send them to you. In the meantime, if (good fortune to you!) you give birth, if it is a boy, let it live; if it is a girl, expose it.”21 This presents a case in point of the coexistent psychological streams – the ability to care for and value a child, but still choose to expose an infant. Far from the throwaway gender readings this text has been previously subjected to, it portrays a deep sense of care for the family in the mentions of both wife and “our little child” as well as an anxiety about poverty and (clearly) an ability to adequately raise an extra family member who would not be able to work to help support the family in the future.

Conversely, one of the most fascinating mentions of abandonment that reflects the paradigm of abandonment mythology is in the works of Seneca the Elder. He contends that it is “harsh” to accuse a father who has abandoned a child of an “act of cruelty (saevitia)” (Sen., Contr. 9.3.2). This openly challenges the inherently mythic survival belief, acknowledging the emotional pain parents would encounter in making such a decision to abandon a newborn infant. However, the euphemising discourse surrounding mythological and actual instances of abandonment is still more prevalent in the extant sources.

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A mythic foundation The prevalence of abandonment tales in Roman mythology suggests a collective mental construct and some form of subscription to quixotic futures for an abandoned infant. Bedford attests to the use of the ‘abandoned infant-figure’ in Roman mythology and rightly contends that “the social phenomenon which gave rise to this motif is the exposure of infants.”22 The most obvious and compelling argument is that the act of abandonment is a crucial element in the ‘foundation’ myth of Rome. The abandonment (or attempted infanticide) of Romulus and Remus as infants is famously recounted in Livy: …the boys were ordered to be throw into the river... to drown them…after the floating cradle in which the boys had been exposed had been left by the retreating water on dry land, a thirsty shewolf…came to them, gave them her teats to suck... the king’s flockmaster found her licking the boys with her tongue…his name was Faustulus. He took the children to his hut and gave them to his wife Larentia to bring up…

Livy 1.10.2.3-9 It is worth offering a comparison with the account of Dionysus of Halicarnassus, who also describes in detail the consequences of the abandonment: [the ark] threw out the babes, who lay whimpering and wallowing in the mud...a she-wolf that had just whelped appeared and, her udder being distended with milk, gave them her paps to suck and with her tongue licked off the mud with which they were besmeared.

Dionysus of Halicarnassus I 79.4-10 Dionysus also adds an extra element in his description of Faustulus’ home as he details Larentia’s loss of an infant prior to the discovery of Romulus and Remus: she had just given birth to a child and was grieving because it was still-born, [Faustulus] comforted her and gave her these children to substitute in its place…

Dionysus of Halicarnassus I 79.4-10 Discounting the appearance of the wolf, the mythological theme suggests that families who had lost an infant through illness or accident had the realistic option of coping with their loss through the adoption of an abandoned baby.

Both Livy’s and Dionysus’ recounts could be juxtaposed with Juvenal’s Satire VI

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(see 2 above). The elements of abandonment near a water body, miraculous care by a supernatural figure and then adoption by a friendly “upright” figure represent an appeasement of the key anxieties surrounding abandonment practices. This is not to suggest that Romans sought solace in the delusion that their deserted children might be “suckled” by wild animals.23 The subscription of Roman ideology to the myth of abandonment, survival and adoption of Romulus and Remus, the mythic founders of Rome, presents useful evidence of the widespread engagement and belief in this ‘optimistic’ construct.

Separating child murder Infanticide, or abandonment of infants and children after the decision has been made by the family to accept and rear them, is viewed as a horrific and perverse act in Roman literature. However, Harris contends that the acceptance and willingness of Roman parents to abandon their children “contrasts with their protectiveness towards children once they had passed that stage,” and it should be understood that the genre of mythic child murder allows for a psychological separation that in fact validates abandonment.24 By characterising the act of killing children as extreme and abhorrent, Roman ideology reinforces the commonplace, contained nature of abandonment.

In particular, the mythic child murder of Astyanax enunciates Roman revulsion at the act of deliberately killing a child who has been chosen to be reared. Within the Roman imperial period, the myth of the infanticide of Astyanax is represented in two literary works: briefly in Ovid’s Metamorphoses and extensively in Seneca’s tragedy the Troades. Ovid makes explicit the physical link of the towers between scenes from the Iliad and Astyanax’s eventual death; From those high towers Astyanax is thrown, whence he was wont with pleasure to look down, When oft his mother with a fond delight Pointed to view his father’s rage in fight, To win renown, and guard his country’s right.

[Ovid Met. 13.415-20] Through linking the physical space of the towers in the passage, Ovid makes explicit the tragedy and perversion of Astyanax’s murder. Ovid highlights how both elements which had previously acted as protection for Astyanax (his father Hector and the physical battlements of Troy) are inverted, causing his horrific death.

Similarly, Seneca’s treatment of Medea’s murder of her children is fraught with graphic violence and a pervasive madness. He has the Chorus describe the deed as “impending, wild, monstrous, impious” [Sen. Med. 397] and uses the placement

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of Medea’s filicide as the catharsis to tension throughout the play. Seneca also has Medea reflect upon the nature of her act of killing her children: “that unheard-of deed, that accursed guilt…” [Sen. Med. 986].

The importance of the father relationship in the murder of a child is developed most extensively in Roman texts, unsurprisingly given the emphasis on patria potestas and the stylisation of many emperors as pater patriae.25 Ovid and Seneca both foster and exploit the parallel between father and son, Hector and Astyanax.

Seneca has Andromache highlight Hector’s distinguishing physical traits and behaviours which his son displays: “O child, the certain son of a great father…You are descended from an all-too-famous bloodline: you look too much like your father. My dear Hector had this same face. This was how he walked and how he held himself. His hands were strong, like yours; like you, he was tall; like you, he tossed his head shaking the scattered hair, his eyebrows frowning sternly…”

[Sen. Tro. 497-510] Seneca explores this further by implying that Andromache’s love for her son is a ghost or reflection of her great love and devotion to her dead husband; “spirit of my husband: what I love in my son, Hector, is only you. Let him live, just to revive your face.” [Sen. Tro. 645-47] This is developed in Andromache’s realization that; “Both of them are Hector” [Sen. Tro. 659].

To further support this claim of a potential Hector, Seneca employs similes of nature to suggest a youthful development of strength. Descriptions of Astyanax as like a ‘lion cub’ [1194], ‘sapling’ [531] and ‘calf’ [756] are used in direct contrast to his weaknesses, being “small and delicate, unable yet to bite” [1196]. Thus Seneca show that Astyanax is already quickly developing signs that he will grow into a man identical in strength and character to his famous father; Seneca has him “already growl[ing] and mak[ing] his threats, snapping his milk-teeth…just so the boy, in the grip of his enemy, showed a proud ferocity…” [Sen. Tro. 1198-1204]. In particular, Odysseus is used by Seneca to suggest a latent strength within Astyanax as a direct result of his paternity: Seeds of good stock grow up to match their birth. Just as a young calf, in the midst of a mighty herd, whose first horns have not even pierced his skin, suddenly lifts his head and neck up high the leader of his father’s folk, lord of the flock; so the slender sapling from a tree axed down, in a little while grows up as big as her mother, casting shadows on the ground and leaves to touch the sky; so the ashes left neglected from a mighty fire grow strong again…

[Sen. Tro. 530-545]

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Through linking the infanticide victim with his father, Seneca reflects the perversion of patriae potestas: someone has taken away the vital father figure and then attacked the vulnerable, ‘exposed’ son. Seneca demonstrates the perversion of the legally enshrined right of the Roman father to the life of his son. Ultimately in the Troades, Seneca depicts Astynax’s death is an inevitably horrific close to an epic cycle of violence and destruction.

The dramatic, graphically brutal and universally condemned interpretations of child murder in Roman engagement with mythology create an enormous mental space between these acts and acts of abandonment. The purpose of these myths is to characterise the act of killing children as horrific, to distance it completely from abandonment, an act which is likely to result in filicide. The distancing and quixotic nature of the ‘abandonment construct’ is juxtaposed with textual depictions of child murder and filicide to demonstrate the effectiveness of the detachment mechanism.

The loss of ‘chosen’ children A compelling argument for the existence of a social construct surrounding abandonment can be made by examining representations of children that were chosen to be reared. In particular, funerary monuments, poetry and personal correspondence attest to the deep sense of emotional investment in ‘chosen’ children from a very young age. This can clearly be seen in a Trajanic funerary monument, the altar of Hateria Superba (Figure 1). The infant is depicted as much older than her given age, wearing adult-style-clothing (tunic and toga) with an ornament in her hair. This can be seen as imbuing the combination of “qualities of a child, woman and goddess” onto the missed child.26 Huskinson contends that the positioning of the cupids, doves and dogs indicate “the small girl is endowed with affection and admiration by figures surrounding her at every level.”27 Dated to c.100-110CE, the inscription attests to the youth of the child (18 months old) and the extreme grief of the parents: “Quintus Haterius Ephebus and Julia Zosime provided this memorial for their most unfortunate daughter Hateria Superba who lived one year, six months, twenty-five days” CIL 6.19159 28 The precise dating of age emphasises the short span of the child’s life and characterises it as cruel, an expression of grief after the death of a beloved child. Quintilian similarly grieves over the shortened life and therefore time spent in the family, in the death of his son: “my youngest boy was barely five, when he was the first to leave me.” [Quint. Inst. VI Preface 5-7]. Martial also employs this rhetoric:

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Buried am I here, by Bassus mourned, Urbicus, an infant, to whom mightiest Rome gave race and name. Six months were wanting of my first three years when the harsh Goddesses cruelly snapped my thread…

[Martial Epigrams 7.116] Juvenal also presents a poignant and emotional portrait of deep grief for infants: “When Nature gave tears to mankind, she proclaimed that tenderness was endemic in the human heart: of all impulses, this is the highest and best… It’s at Nature’s behest that we weep when…the earth is heaped over an infant too young for burning.”

[Juvenal Satires 15.131-140] The description of grief for children as “the highest and best” emotion, further distances the reaction of parents to a reared child who has died to the emotional severance required to abandon an infant.

Finally, it is the private expressions of grief which make the most compelling evidence. In his letters to Marcus Aurelius from 165CE, Fronto expresses the immense grief he and his family feel for the loss of his infant grandson: Now it is even my darling grandson… who more and more rends and racks my heart…It will scarce befit me, her aged father, to comfort [my daughter]; for it were more fitting had I myself been the first to die… We miss the well-known gait, the voice, the features, the free air; we mourn over the pitiable face of the dead, the lips sealed, the eyes turned, the hue of life all fled. Be the immortality of the soul ever so established, that will be a theme for the disputations of philosophers, it will never assuage the yearning of a parent…

Fronto, Letters 7.6-12.

The raw emotion evident in the graphic juxtaposition of the character of the living child with the physical appearance of the dead body make a compelling and undeniable argument for the deep affection felt by Fronto to this child. As Rawson contends in her excellent Children and Childhood in Roman Italy, “practices of abandonment and infanticide are not inconsistent with high valuation of children, and even when high mortality rates were to be expected parents could deeply grieve for their children.”29 Similar attitudes to the Romans can be seen in pre-modern France and England in which McManners has noted that the evidence attests to “the desire to have fewer children, but to look after them better.”30 The Roman social construct of emotionally detaching from the act of abandonment functioned as a kind of emotional and practical conduit, allowing for an act of desperation to

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be tempered by love and care poured into children who were raised.

Conclusions On a surface level, Roman attitudes towards abandonment appear essentially practical: a socially accepted method of birth control used in harsh necessity primarily to restrict the size of the familia. However, the prevalent evidence of a positive mythology construct demonstrates the existence of anxieties surrounding the act of abandonment. Commemorative art and literature attests to the value, care and investment in reared children. This mutually supports the cultural survival myths and sharp distancing mechanism from the act. The depicted contrasts between abandonment and child murder in mythology further demonstrate that the Romans did not view abandonment as cruel, inhumane or abhorrent an act as they did other child killings.

It is important, particularly in studies of antiquity, not fall into the trap of prejudice, judging the actions of a society based on our own traditional, culturally rooted moral and ethical frameworks. Historians need to be able to interpret Roman society by grasping the frameworks of the ‘Roman way of life.’ Successful interpretations often enrich our understanding of current issues in society; there are striking similarities in the modern abortion debate, with the pro-choice slogan ‘every child is a wanted child’ resonating some Roman attitudes towards abandonment. However, more importantly, abandonment is still a major issue in impoverished parts of the world – a deeper understanding of the Roman framework surrounding it can lead to innovative approaches to alleviating social crises.

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appendix

Figure 131

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endnotes 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

Beryl Rawson, Children and childhood in Roman Italy, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 118.

Abandonment will be defined in this paper as the act of parents relinquishing care and place of a child under the age of 1 year (but more frequently an infant who has not been officially named which usually occurs 8 or 9 days after birth) in a family by physically removing the infant and leaving it in a place removed from the family home.

Christian Laes, Children in the Roman Empire: outsiders within, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2011) 66. Also uses this definition, particularly citing the abandonment of ‘nameless infants.’

Ibid., 14.

Scott suggests that modern scholarship has characterised practices of abandonment and infanticide as a ‘routine disposal of a biological commodity which we modern observers have arbitrarily decided is inherently “unvalued” or “unwanted.”’ (Scott 2000, 37).

William V. Harris, ChildExposure in the Roman Empire, The Journal of Roman Studies 84, (1994): 2.

Harris rightly identifies that ‘even the most detached historian may find it hard to investigate ancient childexposure without revulsion.’

Mark Golden, Children and childhood in ancient Athens, (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1990).

John E. Boswell, Expositio and Oblatio: The Abandonment of Children and the Ancient and Medieval Family, The

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

18.

19.

American Historical Review 89, no.1 (February, 1984): 10-33.

Sarah B. Pomeroy, Families in Classical and Hellenistic Greece: Representations and realities, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 3-12.

Greek society in particular presents similar views to Romans on abandonment. There is evidence that certainly Jewish and perhaps Egyptian and Germanic societies had drastically different attitudes, as will be explored in Chapter 2 of this paper.

Jeanine D. Uzzi, Children in the visual art of Imperial Rome, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

Laes, Children in the Roman Empire, 217.

These social changes reflect a complex development in the ideology of the Roman empire: a socio-political move towards a system based on Christianity.

Kathy Rudy, Beyond pro-life and pro-choice: moral diversity in the abortion debate, (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996), 2-17.

Harris, Child-Exposure in the Roman Empire, 4.

Rawson, Children and childhood in Roman Italy, 356.

Harris, Child-Exposure in the Roman Empire, 15.

Laes, Children in the Roman Empire, 66.

Laes highlights that ‘the right to life of a newborn is a Christian, not a Roman concept’.

Harris, Child-Exposure in the Roman Empire, 15.

Rudy, Beyond pro-life and prochoice, 203-211.

Rudy’s argument that attitudes towards birth control are deeply rooted in com-

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20.

21.

22.

23.

24.

25.

26.

27.

28.

29.

30.

31.

munity values and, even in the modern age, are unlikely to change or be convinced by another viewpoint.

Rawson, Children and Childhood in Roman Italy, 118.

‘Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 744,’ in Life in Egypt Under Roman Rule, ed. Lewis Naphtali, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 54.

Donald B Bedford, ‘The Literary Motif of the Exposed Child (Cf. Ex. ii 1-10),’ Numen 14, no.3, (November, 1967) 211.

Harris, Child-Exposure in the Roman Empire, 8.

Also see Bedford ‘The Literary Motif of the Exposed Child, 213.’

Harris, Child-Exposure in the Roman Empire, 2.

Laes, Children in the Roman Empire, 14.

Janet Huskinson, ‘Constructing childhood on Roman funerary monuments,’ in Constructions of childhood in Ancient Greece and Italy, (Princeton: American School of Classical Studies, 2007), 236.

Huskinson, Constructing childhood on Roman funerary monuments, 233.

Jo-Ann Shelton, As The Romans Did: A Sourcebook in Roman Social History, 2nd ed, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 56.

Rawson, Children and childhood in Roman Italy, 117.

McManners 1981, 57. Cited in Rawson 2003, 117.

Image sourced from Huskinson, ‘Constructing childhood on Roman funerary monuments’.

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On a Train Just Outside Montreux Taylor Beaumont-Whiteley

We glide between backyards littered with overflowing clothes lines and snow-topped trampolines.

Two seats in front a girl reading The Great Gatsby turns a page less delicate than herself.

She seems at ease with the two beat bumps of the train, her clean nails catching Swiss sun.

I open my curtains like those of a stage to reveal Lake Geneva with its omnipresent fog.

There’s no green ebb or sign of a dock, but perhaps there needn’t be when we’re only two seats apart.

But she reads, transfixed, and so it feels like there’s a lake’s distance between us.

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ART

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A Personal Favourite Result about π

Michael Patterson

π is Everywhere One of the most famous numbers in all of mathematics, π, has the pleasant habit of popping up where you least expect it. From its original definition, as the ratio of circumference to diameter of a circle (any circle: the result is always the same), it has found its way into almost all areas of mathematics. For instance, the famous Gregory Series

gives a simple, although highly inefficient, means of calculating π. It is in some sense surprising that such a simple pattern can be ascribed to a number that is both irrational (meaning it cannot be written as the ratio of two whole numbers) and transcendental (meaning it is not the solution of any polynomial equation with integer coefficients).

Another result which often inspires philosophical reflection on the nature of mathematics and truth is the famous Euler’s Identity

which contains (arguably) the five most important constants in mathematics: π, e, i, 0 and 1. Dr Keith Devlin of Stanford University said “Like a Shakespearean sonnet that captures the very essence of love, or a painting that brings out the beauty of the human form that is far more than just skin deep, Euler’s Equation reaches down into the very depths of existence.” π has also found its way out of the purely mathematical world, and into other areas of life. There is a famous case in Indiana where a local doctor convinced parliament’s lower house to pass a bill which essentially set the value of π at 3.2. Not only is this false, it is interesting that the parliament felt it could legislate on an issue of mathematical fact. Fortunately, the upper house did not pass the bill, in part due to unfavourable press on the issue.

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In this paper, I will prove my personal favourite utterly-surprising-appearance of π, and it arises in the calculation of this integral: (1) Evaluating the Un-Evaluatable 2 We have a problem when trying to evaluate (1) because e−x has no antiderivative in terms of finite combinations of “regular” functions (such as polynomials, logarithms, exponentials and trigonometric functions). So unfortunately, using the Fundamental Theorem of Calclulus directly is not an option. We could easily apply numerical techniques to determine that the value of the integral is approximately 1.7725..., but it turns out we can get an exact value. The result was such a surprise to me, I have remembered the proof ever since.

We begin by taking the square of the integral:

where we changed the dummy variable from x to y in the second integral. Now, we can move the integrand from the first integral inside the second, creating a double 1 integral

At this point we change to polar coordinates defined by the transformation

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as the integrand contains the term x2 +y2 = r2. The region of integration R2 is given in polar coordinates by 0 ≤ r < ∞ and 0 ≤ θ < 2π which is essentially an infinitely large circle. Remembering to include the Jacobian2, we obtain

This final improper integral can be evaluated easily due to the presence of the r term beside the exponential. Making the substitution u = r2 so that du = 2r dr, we get

Therefore, and since I > 0 (given the integrand is positive for all x) we can conclude: (2) Although the proof gives away the ending a bit (you can tell that π will be involved once the θ integral is complete), it is still a monumental surprise. It is further surprising that π appears in a square root: up until this point in mathematical history π had never appeared inside square roots. In fact, the term is characteristic of this and similar integrals, and its appearance in general indicates the presence of these integrals.

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Impressive, but is it important?

While it’s always nice to find clean and elegant results, does this one have any actual use? Or is it simply a mathematical curiosity?

2

It turns out this result is central to statistics, because the integrand e−x gives us the basic form of the Normal Distribution, known colloquially as the bell curve. The immediate reason for needing the result of equation (2) is that the area under the bell curve needs to be 1 (i.e. the probability of something happening is 100%). So, we can to make this happen. now divide by The actual full equation for the probability density function for the Normal Distribution with mean μ and variance σ2 is given by (3)

where we can see the area-correction factor of

in the term out the front.

The Normal Distribution is arguably the most important probability distribution as a result of the Central Limit Theorem. It says that if you have a large number of independent random variables, each with finite mean and variance, then the mean of these variables becomes Normally Distributed as the number of variables approaches infinity. In practice, this means that any quantity which is the net effect of a large number of smaller independent effects will roughly follow the Normal Distribution.

This explains the widespread appearance of the Normal Distribution. For instance, the heights of human beings are roughly normally distributed, and this can be explained because of the large number of different small effects (genetic, environmental and behavioural) that together determine one’s height.

endnotes

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1.

We’re glossing over some subtle convergence issues here. Everything basically turns out well in the end because these integrals are absolutely convergent.

2.

The Jacobian of a transformation plays a similar role to the derivative when you do a u-substitution.

Michael Patterson

â&#x20AC;&#x153; Given the nature and magnitude of the challenge, national action alone is insufficient â&#x20AC;?

Ban Ki-Moon

A Prolegomenon to any Planning for the Future Graham Priest The Brian Medlin Memorial Lecture Delivered at Flinders University, 22nd October 2008 Brian Medlin (1927-2004) was the Foundation Professor of Philosophy at Flinders University Introductory Remarks I’d like to start by paying tribute to Brian. Brian was a man of many talents, and prime amongst these was his shrewd philosophical ability. He was no “ivory tower” philosopher, however: he was passionate about what he believed in, and he had the integrity to put his philosophical beliefs into practice. In Adelaide, for example, he spearheaded the anti-war movement in the Vietnam era. Indeed, there is the famous photograph of him on the front page of the Advertiser, one day in September 1970, being forcibly arrested at an anti-war rally. As one might surmise from this, Brian’s views were on the political left. During his days as Flinders University, the Philosophy Department there became the most committed Marxist Department in Australia. And in his later years, he came to see the importance of Environmentalism to the left, and of the left to Environmentalism. For all these things I admire him.

And now a few comments about where I am coming from in this lecture. For those of us on the political left, the collapse of Stalinism in Europe was both exhilarating and demoralizing. It was exhilarating because Stalinism was a perversion of Marxism, which had succeeded in giving it a thoroughly bad name. Yet, while it was there, it gave hope: it served to show that capitalism was not inevitable, and that alternatives to it were indeed possible. With the collapse of Stalinism, and the consequent hegemony of capitalism (to which even China has now succumbed), this is no longer the case. The political left has been cast into the wilderness. It is clear that new ideas are needed, and that new thinking is required to develop viable alternatives to capitalism. But little progress has been made on the issue. This is due, in part, to the difficulty of an articulation that is not utopian, in the Marxist sense. It is no good figuring out what an ideal society would be like; what needs to be done is figuring out how to change this society to a more enlightened one.

What follows is a small contribution to this project – though I warn that it is a rather pessimistic one.

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A final preliminary comment. I was at an art gallery in Kyoto earlier this year.

There was an exhibition of German poster art from about the first thirty years of the 20th century. The posters from the first decade of the century were full of optimism, displaying new ideas, products, forms of art. As the decades roll on, the posters reflected the harsh realities of the 20th century: the first world war, inflation, depression, the rise of Nazism. There the historical period of the exhibition came to an end. But we all know what came later. I was struck by the thought that the people in the first 10 years of the last century had absolutely no conception of the traumas and horrors through which they were going to live (The thought was grimly reinforced by a visit to Hiroshima a few months later). We are in the same position with respect to this century. The pace of change is accelerating, and there is no doubt that things will change a lot more in this century than in the last.

Doubtless, much of what happens in the process will be just as horrible and traumatic as events in the last century, if not more so. But our ignorance is just as great as that of our predecessors 100 years ago.

Part 1: the Looming Catastrophe So let us get down to business. It is clear that an environmental catastrophe is looming, caused by global warming. Pundits disagree about exactly how close it is, and about what its precise effects will be. Even if we knew exactly how much global temperatures were going to rise (which of course we don’t) our models of the effects on the earth, its climates, ecologies, and so on, are very crude. Worse, changes may well not be gradual. Quite plausibly, the systems in question are catastrophic, in the technical sense: there can be sudden and irreversible changes.

But that caveat aside, things are obviously not looking good. Even maintenance of the status quo will result in erratic weather conditions and droughts – major disruptions to food production; and rising sea-levels – resulting in population shifts (Remember how much of the world’s population lives close to sea level).

But the reality is likely to be worse. The political will for change, if it is to have any real effect, has to be global, and it is not there. Even if the US changed its policy to zero-increase immediately (which is not going to happen), China and India are not going to do so until they have caught up with the Western world in industrial development. The increasing capitalization required to raise the living standards means greater energy-consumption and heat production. Moreover, if and when cuts are eventually made, temperatures will still rise for some time, due to hysteresis.

Even if I am wrong about this, there are reasons to suppose that the capitalist system, which – pace Marx – shows no signs of self-dismantling, will produce an

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ecological catastrophe anyway. I will return to this in the third part of the talk.

It seems certain, then, that we are facing dramatic ecological disruption some time this century. The effects of this, though hard to predict, are likely to include: • • •

The destruction of major agricultural areas Major redistribution of populations away from current costal areas The consequent destruction of capital resources in urban and agricultural areas

The result of this is predictable. There will be increasing and intensified competition for resources: food, clean water, primary resources, and markets – especially in a context where China and India will be increasingly competing with North America, Europe – and each other. The consequences of this, again, are likely to be military conflict, and probably outright wars. These, in turn, will lead to further capital destruction, environmental destruction, and degradation of resources. This will produce increased competition, leading to further conflict, and so on… A vicious circle; or, more aptly, a viciously descending spiral.

Of course, this could all be avoided by radical measures: • • •

The installation of a world government The redistribution of the world’s resources more evenly across its peoples Putting a halt to a form of economic production whose rationale is “growth”

But this clearly is utopian wishfulness.

It therefore seems likely that we will witness global ecological and social catastrophe resulting in and from the unleashing of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (Pestilence, Famine, War, and Death). How bad this will be remains to be seen. A worst case scenario is obviously a full scale nuclear war, and the destruction of sentient life. Clearly, for the purpose of social planning, we must assume that, though it will be bad, it will not be that bad: there is nothing to plan for in such a scenario.

Part 2: Consequences for Social Planning So it would appear that we must assume that there will be a catastrophe, but that it will not be the end of sentient life. If so, what we should be planning for is life after the catastrophe, and in particular, the social reconstruction that will be necessary. We should be putting our efforts here – the left in particular (I will come back to this).

Marx was coy about making plans for after the revolution. After the revolution, economic production would be different, and so people would think differently.

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Since it was difficult to say how, exactly, it was difficult to plan. He therefore made only cursory and scattered remarks about life after the revolution. But planning for life after the catastrophe will, in any case, be quite different from planning for life after Marx’ revolution. He envisaged a simple transfer of the means of production – and so, in particular, their preservation – from the hands of a minority to the hands of the majority. In the situation in which we now find ourselves, we have to envisage their substantial destruction.

What issues need to be addressed in the process of planning? All I can do here is to put a few thoughts on the table to open a discussion on the matter.

First, we will need to arrange for the preservation of knowledge. If things go badly, a major thing we risk losing is knowledge. We risk losing scientific and technical knowledge. Such knowledge is obviously necessary for recreating the means of production: food needs to be grown and processed; sick people need to be tended and healed; and so on. But we also risk losing social and cultural knowledge. The preservation of this is also necessary – not least because we need to understand how we got into the mess we are in, so that we don’t get into it again. Moreover, the knowledge needs to be stored in a robust form. This means that it should be stored in multiple locations; for many locations may be lost. It also means that the material should be stored not just in electronic form. Not only can electronic data be destroyed all too easily; in a really bad scenario, we might not even have the means to retrieve electronic data.

Next, we need to think about the germ of a new socio-political structure. Such a structure should be global: we will all be in need. It should be cooperative: we will all need each other. And it should be primed to function if and when existing structures are starting to break down, or have broken down. At the very least, there needs to be a global network of people, who are aware of the situation, and who are committed to functioning cooperatively (So, then, people need to be educated about matters).

We also need to think about how and when to activate the structure. This is a highly non-trivial issue when action may have to be taken in a situation where communication is problematic.

Furthermore, one should hardly expect such planning to be popular. It will be seen as running against the interests of particular groups, such as national governments and international capital. Since these are very powerful institutions, one can expect them to try to suppress such planning. How to deal with this needs to be considered.

Finally, the really hard question: we need to address the issue of what a global, sustainable, economic system should be like. This cannot be capitalism. For this is

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not sustainable. Let us turn to consider this matter.

Part 3: Capitalism and Sustainability Marx thought that capitalism was not sustainable. The ever-increasing pressure for profit (or to be more accurate, surplus value), would make the conditions of workers more and more unpleasant, until they decided that enough was enough, and take over. Clearly this has not happened – at least, not yet. Capitalism has shown a robustness that Marx did not anticipate. Exactly how it has achieved this is a debatable point. Arguably, the globalization of capital has played a large role in the matter. Not only has the widened market decreased the pressure for a time (the gas has a larger bottle, so the pressure is lower, as it were); but, crucially, the globalization has moved the proletariat essentially out of first-world countries into the third world, where expectations are lower, and, in any case, it is easier to control dissent.

Conceivably a revolution of the kind that Marx envisaged could still happen, but it seems unlikely that it would happen before the looming environmental catastrophe (though the global near melt-down of the world’s banking system towards the end of 2008 certainly gave cause for thought in this regard).

So when I say that capitalism is not sustainable, it is not this that I have in mind.

Rather, the reason for the unsustainability is closer to that envisaged a generation before Marx by Thomas Malthus. Malthus argued that population growth is geometric – or exponential, as it is also called (thus if every couple has three children, the population goes up by 50% each generation), whilst the increase in resources – and particularly food-production is arithmetic (that is, it increases by a constant amount each generation). Exponential progressions grow much faster than arithmetic progressions; and so in due course, the population must outgrow the means to sustain it, leading to the unleashing of the Four Horsemen we have already met. For Malthus, only natural causes (e.g., accidents and old age), misery (wars, pestilence, plague, and above all, famine), and vice (which for him included infanticide, murder, contraception, and homosexuality) could check excessive population growth. Malthus favoured sexual restraint (which included late marriage and sexual abstinence) as a check on population growth – though only for the poor and working class (the rich, I suppose, still had vice).

Historically speaking, Malthus has been just as wrong as Marx. Food production has grown at a rate much greater than arithmetic. The reason why, though, is worth noting. The increased productivity has been brought about by mechanization and, crucially, the increasingly intensive use of fertilization. And these form part of the current problem. Many fertilizers emit green-house gasses and, heavily used, give rise to salination and land degradation; and both the production of fertilizers and mechanization depend heavily on the petro-chemical industry, a primary source of global warming. That Malthus’ predications have not been realized to date is,

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therefore, somewhat cold comfort in the present context.

Still, even though Malthus was wrong, his view contained an important insight: resource availability is bounded. In particular, then, exponential increase of resource demand is bound, sooner or later, to come into conflict with this bound. To see why this fact is crucial in the present context we have to return to Marx.

Capitalism is driven by the need to generate profit. It requires constant economic growth, so that a surplus can be produced, to be reinvested to make more profit, to be reinvested to make more profit, to be reinvested… (We know how everything falls apart when an economy goes into recession). The growth requires greater and greater exploitation of the world’s natural and human resources. And the world’s resources are finite and very limited. True, this was never a factor for Marx, enmeshed as he was in the period of Victorian industrial optimism. But we are now painfully aware of it. Capital expansion is bound, therefore, sooner or later, to hit the wall, producing the sort of catastrophe we now face. This is why I said earlier that even if I am wrong about the current effects of global warming, capitalism is bound to produce an ecological catastrophe sooner or later. Global warming is the form of the problem in which we now face it; but if it weren’t that, it would eventually be something else.

And it is worth remembering how fast the wall is hit in an exponential progression.

Suppose that at midnight we have a jar containing one amoeba. Every second, each amoeba in the jar divides to produce two amoebas – so that at every second the size of the population of amoebas doubles – until, at noon the next day, the jar is full.

At what time is the jar half-full? One second before noon.

At any rate, we see why a sustainable economy – one that will not produce, or reproduce, the current grim situation – will not be capitalism.

Part 4: Humanity and Rationality That does not, of course, determine what it will be like. But while we are at it, we should take the opportunity to plan that the new system is not only sustainable, but rational and humane. In particular, the economic system must work for the benefit of people, and not, as in capitalism, the other way around.

The very rationale of capitalism is the production of profit. This certainly benefits people sometimes – or some people sometimes – but the benefits are distributed very unevenly. The rich, of course, have it better than the poor; and whether or not you are rich depends very much on the country in which you were born, and the conditions under which you were born. We face the absurdity that there is easily enough wealth in the world to eliminate poverty, starvation, and provide a decent

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level of health care for all. Yet much of this wealth is not only wasted; it is centralized in the hands of a global few. That is, indeed, a feature of capitalism, since capital tends to agglomerate capital to itself. Moreover, to maximize profit, capitalism is wont to be as stingy as possible with most people’s living conditions. Not only this, unemployment is a structural feature of capitalism. It keeps down the cost of labour, as well as maintaining a “reserve army” of labour for the periods when the trade cycle is in expansion. The unemployed, who are often unemployed though no fault of their own, tend not only to be poor, but suffer the psychological traumas of being put on society’s scrap heap. Even worse, the labour of the unemployed could obviously produce things of social value. But because no one can use it to make a profit, this labour is not realised. Finally, even those people in employment, whether they are rich or poor, are conditioned by an economic system that privileges the simple acquisition of wealth; the capitalist advertising system produces desires that cannot be fulfilled; and people lose sight of the fact that the real things that give life value are not money. As I said, the present system is neither rational nor humane.

As an aside, we have now become so used to thinking of things in terms of profitgeneration, that even things that are clearly not of this kind, such as the health and education systems are conceptualised in these terms – and so deformed. Thus, in universities, funding a staff appointment is called an “investment”, lecturers are evaluated simply in terms of the “money they make” (students taught, research grants obtained, etc.); if they do not “earn enough” they must “increase their productivity” or be expended by “downsizing”; students are a commodity, who “generate income”; education is a process of “value adding” to a commodity; and so on.

This is all crazy. We have forgotten what education is all about: helping people to live a meaningful and fulfilling life. And, yes, that means having enough money to live. But that is an impoverishment of the goals of education of staggering proportion.

Anyway, and coming back to the main point: we need a system which works for the benefits of people, not profit. People are not to be sacrificed at the altar of Mammon; rather, wealth produced is to be used in a way which is conducive to human happiness. When thinking through the details of more sensible economic systems, we should think first of human flourishing, and then see how we can achieve one of these from where we are – or will be, after the catastrophe.

Conclusion: Gambling on the Future I have no doubt that Brian would have agreed entirely with these points. In one of his articles on the environment he says, ‘I assume that you believe with me that the whole planet is in crisis; that unless we correct our behaviour, human beings are unlikely to survive for much longer, while human civilization is almost certain

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to perish’.1 He was arguing 16 years ago, in a context where many people were not even persuaded that global warming was occurring, let alone that this was a disastrous development. He therefore argued that, even if the relevant evidence is not decisive, we should not wait till it is; by then it may well be too late. We should take steps to ensure that things do not get out of hand.

The argument is a simple decision-theoretic one. Even if something is improbable, if it is very bad, it is rational to take steps to guard against it now. This is why, for example, people take out insurance against their house being burned down.

Things have now moved on. 16 years later, nothing has been done to change the situation that Brian diagnosed, and it is now no longer in doubt that global warming and its effects are happening. Brian was hopeful that the catastrophe could be avoided if we all wake up; for reasons I have explained, I am not. If I am right, it is pretty much inevitable given our economic system (It is a striking fact that the few people who are still “global-warming skeptics,” come, for the most part, from the political right, and have an investment, emotional and/or financial, in the current economic system). But even if I am wrong, similar decision-theoretic reasoning still applies. Even if you take the probability of the sort of catastrophe I have envisaged to be low, we need to put in place measures to deal with it now, just because it is so catastrophic. It’s like taking out fire insurance.

This does not mean that we should stop trying to prevent the catastrophe. People who take out fire insurance do not stop taking steps to minimise the risk of fire to their property. Just maybe, we can pull it off. And even if we are doomed to failure, maybe the efforts will mean that the catastrophe will not be as bad when it comes (and so will be easier to recover from). And maybe we can buy ourselves a little time by slowing things down.

But we must also be planning to pick ourselves up afterwards. About how to do this, I have done no more than put a few ideas on the table. I am sure that there are many more questions that need to be faced; and the answers are neither clear nor straightforward. But you cannot plan unless you understand the situation you are in. This talk has had a simple aim: to spell this out. It is nothing more than a very necessary prolegomenon to any planning for the future.

endnote 1.

Human Nature and Human Survival, Board of Research, The Flinders University of South Australia, 1992, 21.

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the forward from the first Ormond Papers (1965)

“ The United States’ major interests are in the western hemisphere. Our major interests are in the East and South-East Asia. Our future is totally bound with that of the Western Pacific, East and South-East Asia. That geographic difference defines in significant ways our different national interest. We live in the Western Pacific, our secure and peaceful future depends upon our relationships with countries of the region. We do not have the luxury, as the United States does, of being able to withdraw across the Pacific, to the western hemisphere. ” Malcolm Fraser

The Road to Modernisation in Indonesia Paved or Potholed by Islamisation?

Huw Hutchison

Introduction This paper will examine the continuing interplay between the forces of modernisation and Islamisation in Indonesian society, exploring the possible dichotomy between the two, and the normative and practical implications each process presents for the future of Indonesia. To achieve these ends, this essay will first seek to explore the various conceptions of the processes in Indonesian history and, in so doing, will provide an understanding of each trend in the contemporary context. Next, the analysis will move through several contemporary examples to establish some idea of the implications of each trend. These examples consist of the increased prevalence of Muslim Indonesian women wearing the jilbab, or ‘veil’ in day-to-day life, the continuing trend towards consumerism and trade liberalisation and, finally, the recent controversies regarding anti-pornography laws that limit some of the freedoms granted by modernisation. In exploring these issues this paper seeks to gain a greater understanding of both modernisation and Islamisation in the Indonesian context, and the potential consequences it has for the future of the nation.

Defining Modernisation and Islamisation The forces of modernisation and Islamisation have transformed Indonesian society in the past two decades. The parallel growth of both processes runs counter to the stereotypical portrayal of Islamisation and modernisation as divergent trends that sit in competition, rather than cooperation, for one another’s objectives.1 In examining these two processes it is essential that the contradictions that do exist, and those that are imagined, be drawn out through a better definition of the terms and a brief summary of their respective places in Indonesian society.

Modernisation Modernisation is the trend towards modernity, broadly defined as an urbanisation and industrialisation of the population, and a reshaping of societal values away from traditional religion and culture towards secularism and consumerism.2 It is generally linked with a liberalisation of economic and political policy that allows the forces of globalisation to establish themselves, and ‘modernity’ to take hold.

Historically, Indonesia has cycled through a number of different conceptions of modernity, some of which varied greatly from the definition, mentioned above,

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employed commonly in the West today.3 During the writing of the constitution in 1945, three main strands of thought regarding Indonesian modernity emerged.

The first form, Marxist modernity, sought to bring prosperity to Indonesia through a dramatically reformed economic system that rejected the capitalist presuppositions of development theory. The second, Muslim modernity, was less concerned with questions of economics than with the relationship of the Indonesian Muslim population with Allah. They saw the founding of the new state as an opportunity to implement Islamic law and fulfil the obligations of Indonesia’s Muslim population to observe their faith. The third, developmentalist modernity, largely favoured the Western construct of modernity, devoting investment toward advancing the education of the Indonesian population, and thus furthering their standing in the world. After declaring independence, a mix of these three ideas was adopted as part of Sukarno’s ‘nasionalisme, agama, komunisme’ ideology. This ideology sought to appease each of the major interest groups and incorporate some of each concept.

But after the rise and fall of Suharto and the persecution of Marxists in the consolidation of New Order power, only the developmentalist and Muslim conceptions remained strong political forces and shapers of Indonesian modernity. Today, some Indonesians do not accept the Western conception of modernisation. For some, Islamisation represents the truest form of modernisation.

Accordingly, Indonesia’s recent development largely adheres to the Western frame work of modernisation, particularly in the urbanisation of the population. 4 However, it deviates significantly in the area of religion, with a tendency towards, rather than away from, the centrality of religion in everyday and political life. Indonesia’s break from the secular norm, of separation of politics and religion, is not altogether unprecedented; the United States of America, one of the world’s most developed nations, is also one of its most religiously devout. But this deviation from the expected process of modernisation still raises questions as to whether religion, and specifically Islam, stands as an obstacle to the process of modernisation in terms of economic and democratic development, or whether it can inform or indeed strengthen it, as the Muslim modernity movement believe.

Islamisation Like modernisation, Islamisation is a process that began to take its current form in the final years of the New Order regime. Borne out of political necessity due to a loss of power and influence, Suharto’s encouragement of Islamism led to genuine changes that resonate in Indonesian society and politics to this day. These changes manifest themselves in a number of ways, both tangible and intangible in nature.

Examples include rising religious extremism, changing social interactions and the implementation of Islamic legal codes at a regional and provincial level. 5 6 Aside from societal outcomes, the current trend of Islamination has had a profound effect on the nature of Islam in Indonesia itself. Perhaps the most significant of these is the creation of the ICMI, Ikatan Cendekiawan Muslim Indonesia, an asso-

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ciation of Muslim intellectuals whose aim is to further Islam within the Indonesian state and society.7 Traditionally, the various forms of Indonesian Islam was a mixture of adat, local customs, and broader Islam, but, with the entrance of this new body, a ‘top-down’ approach has been elected, signalling a change in the nature of Islam in Indonesia.

The Islamisation of Indonesia has also had implications on an individual level.

Evans8 defines this shift as the ‘strengthening of a commitment to Allah and His teachings’9 that occurred in spite of the emergence of the new, more regulated Islam. This might be considered a reflection of modernisation’s influence on the new wave of Islamic thought, which favours individualism and worked against the establishment’s ideal of Islam and Islamisation.

Importantly, as Evans notes, a distinction must be made between ‘Islamisation’ and ‘Islamism’.10 Superficial assessments of Islamisation tend to avoid distinguishing between the two, despite their significantly different objectives. Islamisation, while favouring Islamic values, does not necessarily favour an Islamic state or universal Syari’ah law. Rather, it favours giving precedence to Islamic values and teachings as part of the political process. Meanwhile, Islamism favours the overt entrance of Islam into the political and legal structures of the nation.

Historical and Political Considerations Indonesia – A Secular State?

Further to the earlier discussion of conceptual understandings of Indonesian modernity, an investigation of Indonesia’s founding documents is also helpful in gaining a better understanding of how Indonesia’s founders saw the new nation in terms of religious identity. Proponents of Islamic modernity have, over Indonesia’s history, conducted a number of attempts to give the faith the constitutional recognition they feel it deserves. At the nation’s founding, debate centred on the Jakarta Charter (Piagam Jakarta), specifically, a seven word clause in the constitution’s preamble which would have required Muslims in Indonesia to observe Syari’ah law.

However, this clause was not included in the eventual constitution. This signalled a preference for national unity over Islamism for Indonesia’s founders, despite Islam’s important place in Indonesian society.

Contemporary debate focuses on Article 29 of the constitution, which states that the “The State shall be based upon the belief in the One and only God”, an article meant to appease Indonesia’s Islamists but also maintain unity across the diverse peoples of the nation. In the power vacuum left by Suharto’s fall in 1998, the topic was widely discussed amongst policy makers, with much consideration given to the possible impact of any changes on the Indonesian identity and the processes of Islamisation and modernisation.11 Importantly, the proposals restricted the im-

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plementation of Syari’ah law to Muslims only, as opposed to other Islamic states like Saudi Arabia, signalling the influence of modern concepts like plurality on any decisions from Islamic leaders. In this debate, secularity and the preservation of national unity seemed to win out, but again the topic remains in the political periphery in various forms, with questions of public and private religion still raging.12 Today’s Political Realities Despite the resurgence of Islam as a political force in Indonesia the fortunes of the largest Islamic political parties have taken a considerable battering. In the 2009 elections the vote for the major Islamic parties, the United Development Party (PPP), the National Mandate Party (PAN) and the National Awakening Party (PKB) fell from 32% in the 2004 elections to just 24%. This result signalled a significant loss of appetite amongst the Indonesian people for organised political Islam in its current form, in favour of ‘civil Islam’.13 This is not to say that Islam’s political influence is waning, but rather suggests that the form it takes in the public sphere is shifting. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s own Democratic Party, which adopts popular elements of the Islamisation agenda in their party platform, is not formally Islamic but bases much of its platform on the Islamic political agenda.14 It is important to note that there was a 15% increase of voters from 2004 to 2009 preventing us from knowing whether shifts in voter turnout signals different groups are voting or voters are shifting parties.

This shift in political Islam to its civil form is telling also of the wider relationship between modernisation and Islamisation. The split amongst liberal and conservative movements in Islam in particular elucidates the ironic nature of the relationship of the two apparently dichotomous processes of modernisation and Islamisation. Though their understanding of Islam and its holy texts may be divergent, liberal and conservative Islamic groups have both used their newly found political freedoms, associated with modernisation, to advance their interpretations of Islam amongst the nation’s Muslims. For conservative Muslims, this means a suppression of the freedoms that allowed them to speak out in the first place, whilst for liberal Muslims this means supporting the aspects of modernisation that allow their opposition to speak out against them. Interestingly, according to Visalo, this is indicative of wider trends amongst the two groups in terms of their relative proximity to modernisation pressures.15 Most liberal Islamic groups emerged from the traditional Islamic institutions, whilst conservative and fundamentalist strains originate in the nation’s secular, private and modern universities.

Examples of the Normative and Practical Implications for Indonesia The following examples aim to elicit a greater understanding of the consequences of Islamisation and modernisation coming together in practice. The three contempo-

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rary examples chosen represent the different ways in which the two processes have come together; either dichotomously, complementarily or in some combination of the two.

The Wearing of the Jilbab Brenner argues that an ideological war is currently being waged between the Islamisation and modernisation movements in an attempt to gain ‘moral ascendancy’ and, consequently, social capital.16 One such example of this struggle she gives is the increasing prevalence of the Jilbab, or veil; a religious headdress worn

by Muslim women as an expression of their piety.17 Although the veil is commonplace in Arab countries, up until the 1990s few Indonesian women opted to wear it. However, with the encouragement of more overt, public expressions of Islamic faith and an increasing exposure to foreign forms of Islam, women gradually began moving to wearing veils in their day-to-day lives. It is unclear whether this shift is informed by religious views or a strategic political and social decision for acceptance.

Though superficially in contradiction with modernisation, the wearing of the veil has, in fact, been encouraged by its processes, representing one of the many amalgamations of Islamisation and modernisation in modern Indonesia. In her ethnographic study of Indonesian Muslim women who chose to wear the veil, Rinaldo found that for many, the veil was an expression of modernity.18 While many who subscribe to a Western conception of modernity interpret this act as counterintuitive and indicative of religious oppression, for the women being interviewed the wearing of the veil constitutes their right to individual expression – a distinctly modernist value. In this way, Rinaldo’s findings suggest a trend towards the preindependence conceptions of Islamic modernity.

One might also consider the influence of Western fashion trends and consumerist ideals on the wearing of the veil. The jilbab, just as any other piece of clothing, comes in a range of styles and colours and is bought and sold like any other good.

It is not clear whether the commodification of the veil has lessened its religious significance in any way in the eyes of Indonesian Muslims, but one might suspect that this is a possible outcome of its integration into the capitalist market system.

Consumerism and the ‘Spiritual Economy’ Indonesia’s recent economic growth has lifted it towards the realm of developing nations like China and India. Much credit for this success has been attributed to modernisation, specifically the liberalisation of trade practices and a greater exposure to global markets. But the benefits brought by modernisation are not without their drawbacks, and lingering issues such as massive inequality, wide spread corruption and inefficient industrial practices plague Indonesian society.

The response to these concerns has produced a unique phenomenon, termed by

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Rudnyckyi as the push for a ‘spiritual economy’.19 This spiritual economy is, in essence, the product of both Islamisation and modernisation, and constitutes a call by workers and business leaders for neoliberal economic reforms to be combined with Islamic ethics. The objectives of such a move are simple: to compensate for the moral deficit that many feel that modernisation has imposed upon Indonesian society, and that is evident in the many economic malpractices experienced by Indonesians on a day-to-day basis. It is hoped that by encouraging fairer, more ethically geared economic practices Indonesia can enjoy a more prosperous and just future – an aim shared by modernisation.

Anti-Pornography Laws This example refers to the moves by Indonesian parliamentarians in 2006 and 2007, and eventually passed in 2011, to legislate an anti-pornography bill into law that would apply harsh new limitations on behaviour deemed as ‘inappropriate’ by the state. The ramifications of this measure are significant in a normative sense as it sets the precedent for legislated intolerance on the basis of religion.20 On a practical level, such reforms have the very real possibility of stymieing some of the positive outcomes of modernisation, such as individual and political freedoms. It is not without reason, therefore, that some observers have called this bill a “culture war”21 between conservative Islamic groups and other liberal forces in an attempt to define Indonesia.

The laws, which have been under debate for several years, are problematic in their broad definition of ‘pornography’, which includes any displays of public affection and particular forms of dress deemed too provocative. Bans already exist on what most would consider pornographic materials, a point which brings into question the need for the incendiary naming and language of this particular legislation.22 It is this new definition of ‘pornography’ that sits so strongly in contradiction with the pluralism on which Indonesia was built. Additionally, it gives a worryingly significant amount of political leverage to conservative Muslim leaders who have, at an electoral level, been largely abandoned by the population.

The logical question at this point is why this legislation, with all its drawbacks, is being made law in some areas. As already established, the newfound political freedoms granted by modernisation provide a platform for many conservative Muslims – who might in another time have had their voices suppressed – to perpetuate their ideas. Interestingly, this bill is likely a response to these very freedoms, with the Western influence that they carry deemed by many conservative leaders as endangering the state of Islam in Indonesia.23 Conclusions The processes of modernisation and Islamisation have played a central role in the development of Indonesia. Identified since that nation’s founding as ideologi-

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cally significant but at times incompatible trends, a constant question lingers over which will gain the ascendancy in the competition for Indonesia’s future. But, after analysis and consideration, it is evident that Indonesia may not be best served by the dominance of just a single trend. Instead, it requires a balance between both modernisation and Islamisation to safe guard the nation’s future. By working at times in opposition and at times in harmony these two trends are able to bring out the diversity on which Indonesia was built and upon which it depends. So as to the question of Islam’s role in defining Indonesia’s path to modernity, so far it has proved to be far more a guide than a distraction, and it might be expected that it will continue to hold this role for the foreseeable future.

endnotes 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

152

John O. Voll, ‘Islam and democracy: is modernization a barrier?,’ Religious Compass 1, no. 1 (2007): 82.

Ibid., 83.

Robert Cribb, ‘Nation: making Indonesia,’ in Indonesia beyond Suharto: polity, economy, society, transition, ed. Donald K. Emmerson, (New York: Armonk, 1999), 20.

‘CIA World Fact Book: Indonesia,’ Central Intelligence Agency, accessed June 28, 2012, https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-worldfactbook/geos/id.html.

John Sidel, Riots, Pogroms, Jihad : Religious Violence In Indonesia, (London: Cornell University Press, 2006).

Suzanne Brenner, ‘Private Moralities in the Public Sphere: Democratization, Islam, and Gender in Indonesia,’ American Anthropologist 113, no. 3, (2011): 479.

Robert W. Hefner, ‘Islamization and democratization in Indonesia,’ in eds. Robert W. Hefner and P. Horvatich, Islam in an era of nation-states: politics and religious renewal in Muslim Southeast Asia, (Honolulu: University of Hawaii

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

Press, 1997), 27.

Ibid., 27.

Toby Evans, ‘Separation of Mosque and State in Indonesia,’ Policy 27, no. 4, (2011): 35.

Ibid., 35.

N Hosen, ‘Religion and the Indonesian Constitution: A Recent Debate,’ Journal Of Southeast Asian Studies 36, no.

3, (2005): 424.

Ibid, 424.

Hefner, ‘Islamization and democratization in Indonesia,’ 2000.

Bernard Platzdasch, ‘Islamism In Indonesia: Politics In The Emerging Democracy,’ (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies 2009), 3.

Phra P. Visalo, ‘The Dynamics of Religion in the Age of the Gloablisation: Lessons from Indonesia, The Phillipines and Japan,’ in The Asian Face of Globalisation: Reconstructing Identities, Institutions and Resources The Papers of the 2001 API Fellows ed. RG Abad, (Tokyo: The Nippon Foundation, 2001), 26.

Brenner, ‘Private Moralities in the Public Sphere,’ 478.

Suzanne Brenner, ‘Recon-

Huw Hutchison

18.

19.

20.

21.

22.

23.

structing self and society: Javanese Muslim women and “the veil”,’ American Ethnologist 23, no. 4, (1996).

Rachel Rinaldo, ‘Muslim women, middle class habitus, and modernity in Indonesia,’ Contemporary Islam 2, no.1, (2008): 23.

D Rudnyckyj, ‘Spiritual Economies: Islam and Neoliberalism in Contemporary Indonesia,’ Cultural Anthropology 24, no. 1, (2009): 104.

P Allen, ‘Challenging Diversity?: Indonesia’s Anti-Pornography Bill,’ Asian Studies Review 31, no. 2, (2007): 101.

E Bayuni, ‘Porn bill debate exposes culture war fault lines,’ The Jakarta Post, March 28, 2006, accessed from http://www.thejakartapost. com/misc.

Allen, ‘Challenging Diversity?,’ 102.

Ibid, 103.

Environment meets Economy China’s Low Carbon Future

Simon Pickering

Hot on the heels of the Copenhagen talks, it is with considerable international interest that China pledged its transition to a low carbon economy in March 2011.

This is the first instance in which a developing nation has pledged to cut its greenhouse emissions so ambitiously, and the movement’s critics argue that the plan will seriously impact China’s economic growth and burgeoning middle class, thereby undermining its ambitious development program. If this is the case, it resigns millions of China’s poor to continued poverty, and retards the most ambitious development program the world has ever witnessed. Thus it is crucial that the economic results of such a transition are fully understood if the development program is to be successful. This paper will present some current policy initiatives before exploring the various advantages and challenges of the low-carbon policy for China, focusing on the implications of solar and wind power, and will conclude by evaluating the policy with regard to equity.

China has already demonstrated its commitment to a low carbon future through current policy initiatives, and a low carbon future for China has become a top national priority. For instance, all provincial leaders are expected to meet a 20% energy intensity reduction target, with “serious political consequences if they fail.”1 In their panic to comply, these targets have the indirect impact of leaders cutting power to municipalities manually with the aim of drastically saving power. Such ambitious targets and policies will also have the crucial economic result of reducing per capita demand for energy over the course of economic development, and will decouple GDP growth from a corresponding growth in energy demand. Already, China’s 1000 most energy-consuming companies have been obliged to sign agreements with central government to set targets to reduce energy use.2 Naturally, the economic advantages of policies directing China toward its low-carbon future are multifaceted in an increasingly environmentally oriented world. The first major advantage stems from increased energy security. Given China’s extraordinary GDP growth targets, the policy of demand reduction through the low carbon economy will curtail the skyrocketing fossil fuel demand that is currently met predominantly by imports.3 China’s dependence on overseas suppliers will therefore be reduced, and limited domestic supply will be protected. Strictly speaking, this is largely a political consequence, but one that has enormous economic implications nonetheless. For one, at current levels, China will be importing 85% of its oil

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by 2030, at a cost of US$400 billion to its economy (assuming oil remains $80 a barrel).4 The rising Chinese demand for oil would support higher international oil prices;5 a vicious circle of dependence for the country. However, the burden of this cost falls hardest on China’s poor, who, for instance, were heavily affected during the oil-correlated Food Crisis in 2008, which raised food staple prices by driving up costs of fertilizer and transport.6 Thus, the transition will not only benefit big business, but will also improve living conditions for the poor. For rural areas of China, it is currently more economically viable to reduce fossil fuel dependence on a small scale by harnessing renewable energy locally, rather than connecting to the national grid at great expense. Indeed, the harnessing of renewable energy may enable the electrification of, for example, schools, homes and hospitals in rural China.7 Perhaps the wider adoption of local renewable energy will also prevent blackouts which occur regularly when demand for heating outstrips electricity supply in cold weather.8 The positive outcomes of reducing China’s oil dependence, however, will be reliant on making fossil fuel alternatives economically viable nationwide in order to reduce continually growing fossil fuel demand.

It is possible that this decreased dependence on fossil fuels may be achieved by the enormously increased amount of foreign direct investment into the burgeoning Chinese ‘green’ sector. While speculative figures vary, some estimate that US$9 billion per month9 is entering the Chinese economy. While this figure, like so many Chinese figures, sounds astounding, a report by McKinsey and Co. estimates that internationally, a low carbon transition may cost only the equivalent of 0.7 to 2.3% of current global GDP,10 offering the comparison that fluctuations in oil prices between 2004 and 2008 accounted for about 5% of global GDP. The report goes on to project that annual investments of 170 billion US dollars over the next 13 years “would generate a return of more than 900 billion US dollars annually by 2020,” an average annual rate of return of 17% based on a very conservative long-term oil price of 50 US dollars per barrel, while returns would be even greater with higher oil prices. Clearly, the transition to a low carbon economy will be a boon for even greater foreign investment in China channeled into its growing green enterprises, as well as enhancing China’s competitiveness in a global market which is increasingly environmentally minded. However, China’s commitment to a low carbon economy is not just drawing money from private investors; under the Clean Development Mechanism, China currently receives 53% of all investment into developing non-Annex 1 countries.11 In addition to this direct investment, another indirect result of the low-carbon transition lies in improving China’s terms of trade. Under the low-carbon policy, the creation of energy efficiency standards and requirements will lead to the investment in, manufacture of, and eventual distribution of appliances and products which are more efficient, higher quality and, by extension, fetch a higher value on an international market that increasingly demands such products.12 Hatashima also cites the intangible regional effects of demonstration

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and technological spillover which might result from China’s success in its transition given its increasingly powerful influence in developing East and Southeast Asia. This is indicated by a survey that found growing interest among a number of regional banks to provide low-carbon financing.

Such financing provides enormous opportunities that go hand-in-hand with the introduction of economic measures leveled against carbon production through a cap-and-trade system or a carbon tax, with such a system demonstrating numerous advantages. According to China Daily: “The country is set to begin domestic carbon trading programs during its 12th Five-Year Plan period (2011-2015) to help it meet its 2020 carbon intensity target.”13 The carbon trading program would make use of the ‘invisible hand’ approach in Chinese policy, and would generate a multitude of jobs in creating, monitoring and financing the program. The other available option, a carbon tax, does not restrict supply, but aims to reduce demand for carbon-derived energy by raising prices. According to the Ministry of Finance, such a tax would start at 20 Yuan per tonne of carbon dioxide, and rise to 50 Yuan a tonne by 2020.14 The great advantage of a tax is that it would “generate revenue for the government” which would “spend these funds on programs designed to help businesses and consumers reduce their emissions or ameliorate the impacts associated with higher energy prices”15 Government revenue would also be raised by removing fuel subsidies that currently exist and totaled US$50 billion in China in 2008.16 The country also stands, unexpectedly, to gain economically from pollution reduction, as pollution is responsible for a proportion of lost GDP every year, with some estimating as much as 10%.17 With this in mind, investment made in pollution reduction would, to whatever degree, compensate for losses resulting from pollution. The primary source of this pollution is China’s industrial sector which, contributing to air and water pollution in particular, is largely inefficient and still under regulated. In 2003, The World Bank found acid rain alone accounted for 30 billion Yuan in damage to crops (1.8% of the value of China’s agricultural output), and seven billion Yuan worth of damage to buildings, in addition to uncalculated damage outside its borders,18 particularly in Japan. While no information is available for forest damage, acid rain would certainly challenge China’s goal of maintaining 20% forest coverage. Furthermore, the “economic burden of premature mortality from air pollution was equated to 157.3 billion Yuan” in 2003, accounting for 1.16% of GDP. With regards to water, pollution aggravates an already strained resource across large areas of arid land, and, again, impacts most on the poor.

Where two-thirds of the rural population have no access to clean piped water and are dependent on polluted water sources, the economic consequences of diarrheal disease leading to child mortality and absenteeism account for 1.9% of rural GDP. Polluted water sources also infiltrate groundwater sources, reducing the quality of water used in industrial machinery, at a cost of 147 billion Yuan a year, or 1% of GDP. Altogether, these in 2003 came to 781 billion Yuan, or 5.78% of China’s

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GDP. Given this figure, it would not be surprising to see the benefits of pollution reduction compensate significantly for any costs of the low-carbon transition.

While recouping the costs of pollution may be an unexpected result, the greatest criticism of the low-carbon transition in China is much more obvious, and revolves around job loss. However, a multitude of jobs will be created as a direct result of the transition, including approximately 1 million in hydropower, 670,000 to 1 million in wind development, and 880,000 in the solar sector, and these jobs will likely have higher than average salaries. The transition would also generate more jobs per megawatt of installed power than traditional fossil fuel jobs, resulting in the creation of approximately 6.79 million direct and indirect jobs.19 Furthermore, in a scenario where China shifts its economic focus from industry to the service sector, we can expect the further creation of upwards of 20 million jobs. Thus, the shift in development focus that would accompany a low-carbon transition will generate jobs. As Fan puts it, “China’s modernization fits hand-in-glove with the ‘greening’ of China.”20 As it stands, the current jobs provided by the industrial sector may be compromised anyway, as the Chinese industrial sector has likely reached a plateau, assuming it follows the common development pattern of contracting with a higher standard of development.21 The industrial sector is also capital intensive, and offers low direct employment, and in China currently account for a 10% greater share of GDP than nations with comparable economic structures.22 Nonetheless, the government will have to instigate programs to ease the transition for the most vulnerable workers to ensure equitable growth23 by providing retraining and comprehensive social security, and continually investing in skills upgrading across the country.

While the arguments presented thus far have focused on the advantages of a transition to a low-carbon economy, of which there are many, there remain some major economic challenges for the policy. Most prominently, while there will be job creation, a greater amount of jobs will be lost, largely in the industrial sector which employs vulnerable migrant workers.24 Pendleton estimates 11.49 million jobs would be lost in a 40% energy efficiency upgrade scenario, while 17.38 million would be lost in a 60% upgrade scenario.25 Furthermore, the cost of retraining retrenched staff reentering the job market has the potential to be enormous, assuming the government intervenes to compensate for job losses. Consider however, that job losses are common results of policy change; between 1997 and 2002, 50 million jobs were lost resulting from government policy changes.26 In the same period, private firms quadrupled employment. Once again, this poses an issue of equity, as it is the sectors employing China’s poor that are hardest hit by the transition, necessitating the aforementioned programs to protect vulnerable workers and an accompanying developmental shift which can more than compensate for job losses.

Though the country is moving away from GDP as the primary means of measuring economic growth, several studies have confirmed that the transition to a low carbon economy will cause GDP growth to contract by more than 2% by 2020.27 This is

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largely a result of lower levels of consumer spending caused through aforementioned job losses and the inevitable rise in energy prices during the shift to a low carbon economy.28 Taken holistically however, such a drop pales in comparison to China’s ambitious growth targets of 7% a year under the 12th Five Year Plan; a phenomenal rate of growth by OECD standards. Furthermore, China’s rates of consumer spending are extremely low anyway, as indicated by more than 50% savings rates,29 against an international backdrop of lowered consumerism in the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis. With higher levels of spending expected in the future, at home and abroad, perhaps now is the ideal time for China to impact on consumer spending. As mentioned earlier, this reduction could be compensated for by savings recouped from pollution costs and retracted subsidies. Ultimately, such a shift is an investment in China’s output per unit of energy, and under the prevailing methods for measuring growth sustainably, raw GDP growth should not take precedence over sustainable and equitable economic growth.

While the rise of energy efficiency (key to the new model of sustainable growth) as a result of the transition clearly has enormous merit, there remain major challenges to the emergence of national energy efficiency. The first is that success will be highly dependent on widespread technology transfers to inefficient industries. Currently, this technology transfer is extremely slow as a result of traditional lack of capital and fuel subsidies which remove incentives to conserve energy.30 Secondly, major industries like power generation suffer from massive inefficiencies as a result of their management structure, and would benefit enormously from greater liberalisation and independence from the state31; however this transition has potential to be turbulent and must be conducted very carefully. The greatest challenge, however, is that the ‘low hanging fruit’ or greatest gains in efficiency have already been made.32 While the Chinese Energy Research Institute claim 30-50% efficiency improvements are still possible overall, between 1980 and 2003, China reduced its energy intensity from 6.7 to 1.8 times that of the United States,33 and will find it increasingly difficult to meet future reduction targets, despite the promises they offer.

It appears a similar problem applies to pollution reduction. While the transition through pollution reduction offers promise for recouped GDP, the absence of a strict monitoring system has meant that this has been more difficult to achieve.

Despite raising investment in pollution reduction from 952.27 billion Yuan (US$118.7 billion) from 1996-2004 to US$238.8 billion in 2005, reduction targets have not been met. Under the 10th Five Year Plan, for example, reduction targets set by central government for SO2 and soot exceeded targets by 42% and 11% respectively.

Even the rosy picture of investment flowing into China is not without inherent challenges. While investment levels are phenomenal, renewable energy production is still not yet economically competitive due to high costs of inputs. While coal costs between 4-6 cents per kWh, wind (the cheapest renewable alternative thus

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far) still costs 5-13 cents per kWh,34 and is only economically viable where rural grid connection costs make wind relatively competitive. Furthermore, the promise of cheap photovoltaic production in China, which has been a major draw for investors, has been challenged by rising prices of raw materials, which reduce the country’s competitive advantage in manufacture. Furthermore, investment in the low carbon industry is yet to be well supported by infrastructure and regulation and is, as Cheung describes it, fragmented.35 Finally, despite China’s massive labour force, the growing industry suffers from a shortage of highly skilled labour because profits turned in the low carbon industry are slow to materialise as compared to the industries where skilled workers are drawn currently: finance and IT. Thus, while foreign investment is booming, there remain systematic adjustments which need to be made to maintain investment in the long run.

Adjustment will also be necessary for the market oriented solution of a carbon tax, which has its pitfalls. For one, it does not actually limit the amount of carbon people can emit, but rather only offers disincentives through price adjustment.

Even then, companies do not have to shoulder the cost of the tax (or a cap-andtrade system), with consumers and, again, the poor worst affected, even if the tax is waived for them.36 Thus, it is not a burden to the electricity production sector, but downstream. Furthermore, the introduction of too high a tax would necessitate compensatory measures for certain industries, chief among them electricity and heat production and supply, ferrous metal, and gas production and supply. Interestingly, one challenge Chinese policy will not have to contend with is the ‘green paradox’. The green paradox describes the increase in rates of resource extraction as a result of a rising tax rate over time, which provides incentive to deplete resources quickly to maximize profit. In China however, this paradox does not hold, because the state, not private industry, owns all fuel resources.

In conclusion we must ask: are the economic results of China’s transition to a low carbon economy equitable, sustainable and beneficial? While job loss and a lower rate of GDP growth present major challenges, the opportunities for profit and development are enormous, whether measured as 17% annual investment returns, the creation of 20 million potential jobs, or reduced subsidies. Equitably, as well as economically, the transition offers enormous returns for some of China’s most vulnerable groups, by reducing pollution-induced mortality, lessening the burden of oil dependence and improving energy security. As Fan puts it so eloquently, “China’s modernization fits hand-in-glove with the ‘greening’ of China.”37 The transition to a low carbon economy for China cannot be viewed simply as an environmental prerogative for the benefit of the international community, but as a cornerstone to China’s extraordinary development program which promises to improve the standard of living for millions of Chinese poor. For that reason, the international community should be keenly watching and supporting the greatest environmental and developmental shift the world has ever seen.

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endnotes 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

Felix Preston, ‘Energy Security,’ The Diplomat (2011) http://the-diplomat.com/ whats-next-china/energysecurity/.

Shanghai Daily. ‘Pollution Costs Equal 10% of China’s GDP,’ China Daily Online (June 6, 2006), http:// www.chinadaily.com.cn/ china/2006-06/06/content_609350.htm.

Robert Priddle, China’s Worldwide Quest for Energy Security (International Energy Agency, 2000).

Preston, Energy Security.

Yinhua Mai, China’s Growing Demand for Energy and Primary Inputs: Terms of Trade Effects on Neighbouring Countries (Melbourne: Monash University, 2009).

Vivienne Walt, ‘The World’s Growing FoodPrice Crisis,’ TIME (27 Febuary, 2008), http://www. time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1717572,00.html.

Priddle, China’s Worldwide Quest for Energy Security.

Jonathan Watts, ‘China Resorts to Blackouts in Pursuit of Energy Efficiency,’ The Guardian Online (September 19, 2010). http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/19/ china-blackouts-energyefficiency.

Tom Young, ‘Reports: China to Impose Carbon Tax from 2012,’ BusinessGreen. (May 12, 2010), http://www.businessgreen.com/bg/news/1806070/ reports-china-impose-carbontax-2012.

E Beinhocker, McKinsey’s Climate Change Special Initiative Report UNFCCC, (2007).

Ibid.

H Hatashima, Assessing the Impact of IFC’s China UtilityBased Energy Efficiency Finance

13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

21.

22.

23.

24.

25.

26.

27.

Program (Washington D.C.: The World Bank. 2010).

Shanghai Daily, Pollution Costs Equal 10% of China’s GDP. Peter Young, An International Perspective: Challenges and Solutions to Investing in a Low Carbon Future (Aldersgate Group, 2010).

US Dept of Energy, Energy Market and Economic Impacts of S.1766, the Low Carbon Economy Act of 2007 Report (US Dept of Energy, 2008).

John Garnaut, “Polluted China Doles out $50b in Fuel Subsidies,” Sydney Morning Herald Online (June 20, 2008), http://www.smh.com.au/business/polluted-china-dolesout-50b-in-fuel-subsidies20080619-2tku.html.

Shanghai Daily, Pollution Costs Equal 10% of China’s GDP. Rural Development, Natural Resources and Environmental Management Unit. Cost of Pollution in China: Economic Estimates of Physical Damages Report (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 2007).

A Pendleton, Low Carbon Jobs in an Interconnected World Report (Global Climate Network, 2009).

Fan Gang, Going Clean: The Economics of China’s Low Carbon Development Report (Stockholm: Stockholm Environment Institute, 2009).

Ibid.

Pendelton, Low Carbon Jobs in an Interconnected World Report.

UNDP, Investing in a Lowcarbon Economy (New York: United Nations, 2010), 135.

Ibid.

Pendelton, Low Carbon Jobs in an Interconnected World Report.

Ibid.

J Kejun, Low Carbon Future:

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28.

29.

30.

31.

32.

33.

34.

35.

36.

37.

Energy and Emission Scenario up to 2050 for China Report (Beijing: Energy Research Institute, 2010).

US Department of Energy, Energy Market and Economic Impacts of S.1766, the Low Carbon Economy Act of 2007 Report (US Department of Energy, 2008).

Wand Yi, China’s High Saving Rate: Myth and Reality Report (Basel: Bank for International Settlements, 2010).

U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, Energy Technology Transfer to China— A Technical Memorandum, (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, September 1985).

Priddle, China’s Worldwide Quest for Energy Security.

Tsinghua University, Review of Low-Carbon Development in China 2010 (Beijing: Climate Policy Initiative, 2011).

Zmarak Shalizi, Energy and Emissions: Local and Global Effects of the Rise of China and India Report (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 2007).

Peter Meison, Renewable Energy Potential of China: Making the Transition from Coal-Fired Generation Report (Global Energy Network Institute, 2010).

R Cheung, ‘China’s Green Investment Challenge’ The Guardian Online (January 5, 2009), http://www.guardian. co.uk/environment/2009/ jan/05/china-renewableenergy-sector.

Gang, Going Clean.

Ibid.

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Polygamy and Islam Alexa Thompson

For centuries, polygamy has been allowed in Muslim societies governed by Shari’ah law, based on passage 4:3 from the Qur’an.1 However, the movement of Islamic Modernism, founded by Muhammad Abduh and Muhammad Rashid Rida in the late nineteenth century,2 has advocated against polygamy by emphasising the importance of understanding the Qur’anic injunctions permitting polygamy in their historical context. Underpinning this argument is an epistemological approach to the Qur’an, which recognises that there is a need to change societies’ laws as societies change. Rashid and Rida argue that the verse must be considered in conjunction with other verses in the Qur’an, which discourage polygamy, and that it must be considered in light of the historical context in which it was ‘revealed’, for it was a time with vastly different social and political parameters than our modern societies. They qualify their argument by specifying that polygamy could still be necessary in certain circumstances. However, from our position in the twenty-first century, I would argue that all the “necessary” circumstances which permit polygamy have been completely eliminated, and there is no longer any wisdom in the practice of polygamy. Completely abolishing discriminatory and misogynistic laws, which allow polygyny3 but prohibit polyandry,4 is a necessary response to the empowerment of women and the movement towards gender equality that has occurred over the last two centuries.

Abduh’s foremost argument against polygamy is that permission for polygamy in Islam applies only with stipulations and restrictions. In verse 4:3, God permits polygamy with the restriction “if you fear you will not be equitable, then marry only one.”5 In another verse of the same chapter, God elaborates, “you will not be able to treat your wives equally, regardless of how eager you are to do so.”6 When these verses are considered in conjunction, the condition restricting polygamy is “so difficult to realise that it represents the same as a prohibition against polygamy.”7 Abduh and Rashid support their argument against polygamy by illustrating that the Qur’anic injunctions need to be understood in their historical context: pre-Islamic Arabic society. According to Rashid, in such societies “polygamy was neither limited according to number nor bound to any restrictive stipulation.”8 Therefore, imposing a restriction of four wives was actually a progressive step towards gender equality. Islam also introduced other revolutionary rights to women; the Qur’an for the first time provided women with rights to inheritance, independent property,

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marriage and divorce.9 Thus, considered in its historical context, Islam was a modernising force. The progressive rights given to women indicate that the spirit of the Qur’an points towards ultimate gender equality and justice. As Rashid argues, “the final aim in the development of social order… [is to have] only two marriage partners.”10 Underpinning their argument against polygamy, Rashid and Rida rely on the concept of ‘ijtihad’, or dynamic jurisprudence, a source of Shari’ah law that has historically allowed for flexibility in the interpretation of Qur’anic injunctions, and thus the evolution of societies’ laws. Traditionalist Islamic discourse is highly resistant to the calls of liberal Muslim theologians to be flexible about Shari’ah law.

The challenge, as Roald argues, is that the Qur’an is seen as the ‘word of God’ and is consequently immutable.11 However, Brown argues that an examination of the Qur’an’s linguistics and content reveal that it was compiled over a period of time, indicating that it underwent early revisions and changes. Thus, there is significant historical precedent for the reinterpretation of Qur’anic verses and revision of Shari’ah law. In addition, the content heavily reflects the immediate context of the Prophet Muhammad’s life in seventh century pre-Islamic Arabic society. Brown concludes that “the Qur’an must be interpreted in light of the events of Muhammad’s life,”12 and therefore must be subject to change according to the prevailing social conditions. Abduh acknowledges the need for flexibility of interpretation in response to changes in context, demonstrating this in his comment that polygamy “did not lead to the same harm that it does today.”13 Social changes towards the empowerment of women that have occurred as a result of globalisation and the advent of time-saving technologies over the last two centuries have rendered the practice of polygamy unwise in most twenty-first century societies. In arguing for the restriction of polygamy, Weiss enumerates the shifting social paradigms for women in Muslim societies that warrant a change to more equal laws. Higher literacy and education levels and a growing market for women to earn a cash income mean that “it is possible for women to now be self-reliant.”14 As evidence of their increasing social power and presence, in 2001, 62 per cent of students enrolled in Iran’s universities were women.15 Therefore, in light of the shifting social paradigms of Muslim societies, as well as a tradition of evolution of Shari’ah law, there is no longer wisdom in sanctioning the gender-discriminatory practice of polygyny.

Although Abduh and Rashid argue strongly against polygamy, they advocate that the practice should be permissible in the case of necessity. By this, they mean that there are certain circumstances where polygamy could still be considered a ‘necessity’ for maintaining the welfare of a particular society. For the majority of the history of most Muslim societies, a strictly gendered division of labour has predominated, where “man must be the breadwinner for the wife and the manager of the household.”16 This social structure, where women are restricted to domestic roles,

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is primarily based on passages from the Qur’an 4:34/38. In societies where these social conditions are strictly enforced, women have been unable to support themselves economically and socially. Therefore, the ‘necessity’ for polygamy arises when a “large surplus of women exists in society” 17 due, for instance, to war. In this case, Rashid allows that “a single man be permitted to care for a number of women” with the strict stipulation that “a corresponding requirement exists.”18 Rashid proposes a final ‘necessary’ circumstance for polygamy to occur in the event that “one woman does not suffice for him to continue blameless in marriage fidelity.”19 However, more recent generations of Islamic Modernists have sought to discredit this argument for allowing limited polygamy. Recent progressive theologians highlight that many Islamic laws are based on patriarchal assumptions of society. They seek to differentiate between these laws, and laws drawn from the actual Qur’anic text. Mashhour argues that patriarchal societies have distorted the meaning of certain passages in the Qur’an in order to reinforce the existing patriarchal body politic. Therefore, modern liberal theologians tend to discount arguments such as Rashid’s, in which patriarchal assumptions are evident. They rely upon a close analysis of the text itself, and the notion of ijtihad to argue for progressive laws. For instance, Engineer refutes Rashid’s argument by demonstrating that the Qur’an is very strict and limited in its reasons for giving permission for polygamy; “to help widows and orphans and not to satisfy men’s extra-sexual urge.”20 When the Qur’anic verse 4:3, which permits polygamy, is considered in the historical context of its revelation, it seems that polygamy was sanctioned as a result of a legitimate ‘necessity’ in societies where women were unable to support themselves.

In twenty-first century Muslim societies, there is no longer wisdom in permitting the practice of polygamy, for where women have been empowered by education and technology to be independent of men, the initial conditions upon which it was allowed no longer exist. Rashid and Rida argue against polygamy as a result of the shifting paradigms of modernising societies. Abduh emphasises the importance of verse 4:129 in the Qur’an, which strongly discourages polygamy. In addition, Abduh and Rashid argue that the spirit of Islam is geared towards gender equality and justice, based on the premise that the Qur’an was a progressive and modernising influence in regards to women’s rights, when considered in its historical context in seventh century Arabic societies. Underpinning the movement of Islamic Modernism are significant historical precedents of the updating and adaptation of Shari’ah law to reconcile the fundamental Islamic principles of justice and equality with prevailing social conditions and context.

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endnotes 1.

2.

‘If you fear that you will not be able to act justly towards orphans marry two, three, or four of such women as seem good to you, but if you fear you will not be equitable, then marry only one, or what your right hands own (as slaves).

Thus it will be more likely that you will not be partial.’

(Qur’an, Sura 4: 3).

Egyptian jurist and religious scholar Muhammad Abduh (1849-1905) and Syrian-born jurist and scholar Muhammad Rashid Rida (1865-1935) cofounded al-Manar, a journal of Qur’anic commentary, in Egypt in 1898, in order to explain their reformist theology.

Rashid and Abduh argued that the Shari’ah concerns worship (‘ibadat) and social relations (mu’amalat). While worship should be strictly guided by the instructions of the Qur’an, they argued that human reason should play a part in formulating laws regarding social relations, which should be continually reassessed according to the changing conditions of

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

societies.

A form of polygamy in which a man has more than one wife at the same time.

A form of polygamy in which a woman has more than one husband at the same time.

Qur’an.

Qur’an, 4:129.

Helmut Gatje, The Qur’an and its exegesis: Selected Texts with Classical and Modern Muslim Interpretations. (Berkley, University of California Press, 1976), 251.

Gatje, The Qur’an and its exegesis: Selected Texts with Classical and Modern Muslim Interpretations, 259.

A. Mashhour, ‘Islamic Law and Gender Equality - Could There be a Common Ground?: A Study of Divorce and Polygamy in Sharia Law and Contemporary Legislation in Tunisia and Egypt.’ Human Rights Quarterly, (2005) 27.2. 564.

Gatje, The Qur’an and its exegesis: Selected Texts with Classical and Modern Muslim Interpretations., 259.

Karin Ask and Marit Tjoms-

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12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

land Women and Islamisation: Contemporary Dimensions on Gender Relations (Oxford, Berg, 1998) 41.

Daniel Brown, A New introduction to Islam, (Maldon, Blackwells, 2003), 66.

Gatje, The Qur’an and its exegesis: Selected Texts with Classical and Modern Muslim Interpretations., 250.

Akbar S. Ahmed and Donnan Hastings, Islam, Globalisation and Postmodernity (London and New York: Routledge.

1994), 135.

Ibrahim M, Abu-Rabi, The Blackwell Companion to Contemporary Islamic Thought, (Victoria, Blackwell, 2006), 630.

Gatje, The Qur’an and its exegesis: Selected Texts with Classical and Modern Muslim Interpretations., 256.

Ibid., 256.

Ibid., 256.

Ibid., 254.

Ibid., 187.

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Melbourne August Julian O’Donnell Eight am, new ponds borne Out of night’s rain in August, “A smelly old month here,” they say, And you nod, smelly.

Talk back to the noisy box in the car By the demisting sign, click them both, One off, one on.

Breathe easy, watch the people go In and out of brick refuges, Talking mutely, smoking fags, Or simply Eating apples.

The soggy wood of the veranda Mixed with the ordure of wet pollen, In spring we’ll still be sniffing.

The creek swells over the path, Pelotons dodge brown sediment, irritated, And under the bridge dissolute birds watch From precarious beams of cheap metal.

At the park preteens pluck at flat footballs, Wearing dress-like tops of navy blue, A boy pinches another under the pile, And no one muddy says anything.

In the district trams stand in car-stained roads, Glazed sporadically in horseshit, And looming skyscrapers bend like plastic rulers, A foot or so in each direction.

In and out of sheltered stations Ring sighs of late-dismay, The train has pulled away, And she’s left on the platform While it fills again from leaky streets.

Left with The Beatles in her ears And bored truly of this song: “Late for life, today, it seems, I should’ve kept the dreams.”

Through the clouds the sun shows, Someone points it out, but it goes.

Again at two-fifteen the clouds clear, Light untangles the people’s nest With a suggestion of September; The winter’s final jest.

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T h i s E a s t e r n A s h H e a p Joshua Castle

Feet find streets, where scarf and skin meet to look beyond the blue grey ink-stain on her bottom lip and through gnarled windows which watch the autumnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s orange prisoners shuffle down below with my thoughts up on the ceiling, mood - flat on the floor For this new city sometimes gets to me, its dusty gutters thirst for cathartic clouds whilst cars hotly grunt down choked streets and still May-time leaves drip from Lygon to La Trobe When liquid lungs finally cry over the rooftops the battered stones prate the where-about of every drop and the hungry cement relinquishes its trash following the unchartered streets in a regatta of junk to the Yarra Before nightâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s jaunt and the farce of being social, the supper time sun bleeds through the clouds and I can light a match on the rooftop of the ablaze sky, washed down with madhouse jazz advancing from an alley-way whilst street-side scribbling, fill the galleries as the youths entice their minds with fast-food and cheap wine I promise not to be one of That Scene selling counterculture from across the counter for so much more than a casual dollar their bootlegged minds, and oversized tweed socks enticing me to spend on such temporary things Worse deep within the leather bound private coffee scene With its sugary currency, skirting the hounds-tooth doorways and rooftops floating cautiously across alcoves and alleyways, cobblestones and highways the caffeine elocutionary defining spoonfuls of lives

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There, where the suit clad skies and leather bound minds step on down to where the cement winds its stories beneath the city and retire from the deep renaissance platforms of the Flinders Street dome below a tentatively quivering neon madman folding his message across the sidewalks working their busy work, living their busy lives Oh how I try to blend into a passing trend of passing absent expressions on the averting eyed pavement eyes which watch this mirrored perspective gleaming off the grey-glass city and policed by the disapproving ticking of traffic lights But now, I am covered in the ash of cultured words and indented quotes My toes now know of quarrelsome cobblestones, and guileful wind With a vague gesture, I now remark of the architecture As though it was all built for me.

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ART

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ART

Gentrification

The Changing Face of the Inner City Hugh Utting

The ubiquitous process of gentrification originated in the 1960s. The term describes the way in which working class neighborhoods in the central and inner city are refurbished via an influx of private capital and middle-class homebuyers who had previously exited the area.1 Geographer Neil Smith argues that gentrification has broadened from ‘spot rehabilitation’ to be inclusive of large-scale urban renewal projects.2 This paper agrees with Smith’s premise of gentrification, but will argue that the process is spreading globally at a more rapid pace than what Smith emphasises, and will therefore contend that Smith does not adequately emphasise how the process is not just confined to global Western cities.3 In addition, this paper will discuss the way in which gentrification is a contemporary urban phenomenon and thus its premise and consequences are still highly contested.

In 1964, sociologist Ruth Glass first coined the phrase ‘gentrification’ when describing the rehabilitation of housing stock by the middle class in Islington, London.4 Smith argues that whilst ‘proper’ gentrification can be traced to the post war cities of the advanced world, there were notable examples preceding it.5 After reviewing the evidence, Smith suggested that precursor experiences of gentrification were occurring sporadically in the United States as early as the 1930s in Georgetown Washington DC, as seen in Figure One.6

Figure One Present Day Downtown Georgetown 2012

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Smith further argues that it would be misleading to think that the protogentrification narrative writings of Baudelaire on 1850’s Paris, Cybriwsky’s writings on 1680s Nantes, and Engles’ ideas for improvements to Britain’s 19th Century industrial cities could be considered as legitimate forms of gentrification.7 Rather, the redevelopments and improvements which occurred during these periods were spatial reconstruction, and not gentrification.8 Smith holds the commonly accepted view that ‘proper’ gentrification did not occur until the 1960s.9 Smith concludes that gentrification has predominantly occurred in the advanced cities of Europe, North America and Australia.10 However, other authorities in the field, such as Rowland Atkinson, elaborate on how ‘gentrification’ processes are not limited to Western “global cities,” and are now in fact occurring globally.11 Smith certainly does note that gentrification is spreading to cities of the developing world such as Johannesburg,12 Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro,13 however he fails to adequately emphasize the extent to which the process is spreading globally, and the different forms which gentrification is manifested in different cities. Such examples are evident in cities of the “Global South,” which are becoming industrialized as a new middle class emerges.14 This has resulted in the rapid emergence of state-led “mega-gentrification” in China, India, South Africa and in South America.15 Furthermore, gentrification can be found in new regional centers such as Leeds (Figure 2), and in capital cities, which were not previously associated with the process, such as Brussels and Moscow.16 It is important to note that gentrification is not just confined to cities, but can include rural gentrification, which has visibly occurred in the United Kingdom and upstate New York.17 Whilst agreeing with Smith that gentrification is occurring globally, it is consistent that gentrification is occurring globally and evolving in different cities, in different manifestations.

Figure Two Leeds, 2012 Inner City Brigate. Clough, 2012

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As gentrification is a contemporary urban phenomenon, there is still much theoretical debate surrounding the process and its boundaries. Smith argues that the gentrification process has widened from ‘spot rehabilitation’ to include largescale urban renewal projects.18 Furthermore, Smith perpetuates the notion that gentrification has evolved from classical interpretations, and is no longer a quixotic oddity of the housing market, but instead has become a larger endeavor of the class remake of the central urban landscape.19 Increasingly these redevelopments are becoming state-led, with national and local governmental policy tied up in supporting gentrification.20 Professor Loretta Lees has expressed some alarm regarding gentrification’s “myriad of forms,” which makes the meaning of the term “so expansive it loses any conceptual sharpness and specificity.”21 In general public discourse, the term ‘gentrification’ is increasingly being confused with unrelated processes, resulting in a “chaotic conception” of the process.22 Despite these ambiguities, the ‘rediscovery’ of a run-down urban district is at the core of the gentrification process.23 Gentrification thus stands for the eternal inevitability of modern renewal, and as cities develop so should the meaning of gentrification.24

Figure Three Anti-gentrification sign , 2011 Smith’s writings place significant emphasis on the theoretical debate of when and where gentrification has occurred. Some citizens consider gentrification a threat to housing, lifestyle and communities.25 The contentious nature of the public debate over gentrification is illustrated in Figure 3.26 Smith notes that the language of gentrification and revitalization often suggest that affected neighborhoods were somehow devitalized or culturally moribund prior to their gentrification.27 Renowned urban planner Jane Jacobs explains that the “self destruction of diversity” occurs when a “diverse” community experiences gentrification.28 Between Smith and Jacobs, there is a common belief that communities which experience gentrification become devitalized once their existing residents are pushed out due to increasing prices.29 Gentrification often leads to social segregation and polarization within cities, including the displacement of low-income groups to the fringes.30

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Despite these apparent negatives, Smith notes that gentrification has spearheaded a middle class optimism and has seen the low-income groups “return to the city” in increasing numbers from the suburbs.31 In addition, Atkinson comments that gentrification can be a stabilizing force, as it increases property values and local fiscal revenues, allows for the rehabilitation of property and “encourages and increased viability of further development reduction of suburban sprawl.”32 This paper agrees with Smith that whilst the communities that experience gentrification do become partly “devitalized” through the loss of some of their district character, it leads to the rejuvenation of the inner city and re-establishment the population.

The reversal of inner city neighborhoods through gentrification constituted an unexpected reversal of what most twentieth-century urban theorist had been predicting.33 Many commentators in the 1980s “anticipated degentrification to occur,”34 yet this has not proven to be the case. Journalist Marika Dobbin has observed that gentrification is still a force in reshaping cities such as Melbourne.35 Melbourne’s Gentrification ‘Latte Line’ boundary of professional inner city middle class had spread from the inner city areas of Richmond, Carlton, Collingwood, Brunswick and Northcote and is moving progressively Westward to former industrial regions such as Footscray.36 Consequently Footscray’s medium house price has risen 246 per cent in ten years, from $188,000 in 2001 to $650,000 in 2011.37 Yet unlike its Southside inner city suburbs, gentrification in Footscray is occurring at a more rapid pace due to the large scale public / private urban renewal projects, such as the $ 90 million 15 hectare Le Mans Places Victoria and Grocon development.38 Consequently a ‘sandwich class’ has developed in Footscray and other inner city Melbourne suburbs, who are ineligible for social housing, yet are unlikely to find an affordable property to rent or buy as they have been priced out of the market.39 It appears that the process of gentrification is a global phenomenon and has expanded to include urban renewal and large-scale developments. Gentrification has succeed in revitalizing former industrial districts and inner city suburbs, which have drawn back the middle classes who had previously abandoned these regions. Yet it has caused an outcry from the working class, minorities and ethnic groups that fostered the desirable culture which originally attracted new residents to the area. If the inner city remains accessible to all socio-economic strata of society, then strategies such as Affordable Housing need to occur. If not, the inner city will become an homogenized region of high paying jobs and commoditized leisure activities that epitomize wealth and status.40

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image credits Clough, L, 2012, Figure Two, Brigate Leed, 3rd April 2012, Viewed 18th May 2012, < http:// www.themetonline.co.uk/news/ local-tv-would-it-work/attachment/ briggate-leeds/>.

endnotes 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

Neil Smith, The New Urban Frontier (New York: Routledge , 1986), 32-33.

Ibid, 37.

Ibid, 38.

Ibid, 33.

Ibid, 34.

Ibid, 36.

Ibid, 34-36.

Ibid, 34-36.

Chris Hamnett, ‘The Blind Men and the Elephant: The Explanation of Gentrification,’ Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 16, no. 2, (1991).

Rowland Atkinson and Gary Bridge, Gentrification In A Global Context: The New Urban Colonialism, (Oxon: Routledge, 2005).

Kate Shaw, ‘Gentrification: What It Is, Why It Is, and What Can Be Done about It,’ Geography Compass 2, no.

5 (2008).

Smith, The New Urban Frontier, 34.

Ibid, 34.

Atkinson and Bridge, Gentrification In A Global Context, 1-3.

Jonathan Steinberg, ‘Bond, Contradictions in the Transition from Urban Apartheid: Barriers to Gentrification in Johannesburg,’ in The Apartheid City and Beyond: Urbanization and Social Change in South Africa, ed. David Smith, (New York: Routledge, 1992).

Luciana Correa and Luiz Ribeiro, ‘Restructuring in large Brazilian Cities,’ International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 19, (1995):

Georgetown, 2012, Figure One, Where to stay in Washington - a travel guide to Washington’s neighborhoods, Viewed 18th May 2012, < http://www.hotels.com/ articles/ar000442/where-to-stayin-washington-a-travel-guide-towashington-s-neighborhoods/>.

14.

15.

16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

21.

22.

23.

24.

25.

26.

27.

28.

29.

30.

369 – 382.

Loretta Lees, ‘The Geography of Gentrification: Thinking through comparative Urbanism,’ Progress in Human Geography 36, no. 2, (2012): 155-159.

Ibid, 156.

Atkinson and Bridge, Gentrification In A Global Context, 1.

Martin Phillips, ‘Rural gentrification and the processes of Class Colonization,’ Journal of Rural Studies 9, (1993): 123-126.

Smith, The New Urban Frontier, 37.

Ibid, 39.

Lees, The Geography of Gentrification, 2487.

Ibid.

Andrew Sayer, ‘Explanation in Economic Geography: Abstraction Vs Generalization,’ Progress Human Geography 6, (1982): 57.

Sharon Zukin, Landscapes of power: from Detroit to Disney World, (Berkeley: University of California Press 1991), 192.

Smith, The New Urban Frontier, 34.

Ibid, 30.

Hamnett, 1991.

Smith, The New Urban Frontier, 30.

Ibid, 32.

Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, (New York: Random House, 1961), 241-243.

Smith, The New Urban Frontier, 32.

Peter Newton, ‘Beyond Greenfields and brownfields: the challenge of regenerating

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Gentrification No, Figure Three, 26th April 2011, Viewed 16th May, 2012, < http://bethblogever. blogspot.com.au/2011/04/reversegentrification.html>.

31.

32.

33.

34.

35.

36.

37.

38.

39.

40.

Australia’s Greyfield suburbs,’ Built Environment 36, no. 1, (2010): 90-93.

Smith, The New Urban Frontier, 40-44.

Atkinson, Gentrification In A Global Context, 5.

Smith, The New Urban Frontier, 32.

Ibid, 45.

Marika Dobbin, ‘Pilates, goat’s cheese: there goes the neighbourhood,’ The Age, January 20, 2011, accessed May 11, 2012, http://theage. domain.com.au/real-estatenews/pilates-goats-cheesethere-goes-the-neighbourhood-20110119-19wof. html?skin=textonly&skin=text-only.

Bernard Salt, Middle-class on the move: How cultural change is shaping Melbourne’s West.

Nicola Webber, ‘Footscray real estate leaps 246pc in decade,’ Herald Sun, June 4, 2011, accessed May 2, 2012, http://www.news. com.au/house-boom-movesto-the-west/story-fn7x8me2-1226069009718.

‘Project Portflio / McNab Avenue Footscray,’ Grocon, accessed May 1, 2012, http:// www.grocon.com/projectportfolio/9/footscray.html.

Maribyrnong Council, Maribyrnong Housing Strategy, (Melbourne: Maribyrnong Council, 2011).

Seamus O’Hanlon, Melbourne Remade, (Melbourne: Arcade Publishing, Melbourne, 2010), 8 – 135.

177

Time Stands Still Dylan Penniket

As far as I remember, this piece originally began with the premise of attempting to recreate an excerpt of one author’s work using the quotes and ideas of another writer. Being a precocious pseudo-academic teenager, I attempted to replicate a particular scene from Jean-Paul Sartre’s Nausea with a random assortment of T.S. Eliot quotes that I had accumulated from the dark corners of the internet and below-par public libraries. It was pretty abhorrent.

I left it for a year or so, came back to it with a better knowledge of both authors, different opinions on the concepts discussed by the authors, and a kind of irrational and inexplicable dislike of Sartre (sorry). In response, I rewrote large swathes of what was previously, direct quotes.

I suppose what this story tries to discuss is the anxiety of being human, of being a complex and largely irrational entity living for largely irrelevant and insignificant matters. Whilst this inevitably stems from the conceptual framework of the original setting from Nausea, attempting to mold the protagonist to an angst-ridden, insecure

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Eliot-esque figure marks a significant departure from the original tale of the existential crisis that plagued a middleage man. Instead, we see the rapid, fragmented thought pattern of a young narrator questioning not what path they took, but what path they are to take in facing the reality of their own self-determination in a largely determined world.

I won’t pretend to have deliberately conceived of and constructed all the ideological intricacies or meaning that I have taken from my Frankenstein’s monster of a short story, but that’s the meaning I took from it when I was finally sick of tinkering with it. You can edit and revise something so many times, but eventually you have to draw the line and let it come to rest as to what it will forever be.

It’s not original, it’s not perfect, but even the isolated words of two generationally separated writers, mixed with the pretentious babble of a teenager can provide meaning. So maybe that’s what this story is really about, I’m not sure. You decide.

DYLAN PENNIKET

Time stands still.

Snow falls atop the glass crown of the Parisian alley, the green-hued wrought iron church steeple that stands above the empty cobblestone backstreet.

to mingle, they question not what it will mean for their own essences, but what it will mean for existence in the grand scheme.

They are at peace, with themselves, and all around.

3pm.

It’s sickening.

3pm, it is always too late or too early for anything you want to do.

I hear the evening shuffle of francaddled accountants and desensitized doctors on their way home after a day of nothing of note.

There is a singular snowflake, borne on winds of origin unknown, yellowed and tarnished after its nonchalant rendezvous with the insidious wisp of tobacco vapour.

It falls content.

The bordellos and alleged ‘coffee houses’ open their doors to those who choose to drown their sorrows in women, drink, or a miscellany of holistic painkillers to further dull their melancholy.

Cigarette smoke starts to rise above the roof-line.

The yellow taint of the nicotine plume interacts with the falling snowflakes, creating a symbiosis between the tobacco pollution and the pure-white snowfall.

The snowflakes put up no struggle, and succumb to the corruption of the Parisian smog.

Tossed and thrown on the whim of an errant updraught, it concedes its own irreconcilable inability to control itself, and resigns itself to becoming a pawn of the elan vital of the world at large.

Nothing feels true.

It is as if I have walked upon a stage decorated by cardboard scenery, which I could quickly remove if I only found the gap in its illusion.

I am all alone, yet I march with all the trepidation of a regiment descending upon a city. I am full of anguish. The slightest move irks me.

I cannot imagine what this illusionary alley wants of me. What part am I to play in its empty doll’s house?

Yet it all seems to work.

There is no conflict, just compromise, in this physical confrontation between binary opposites.

They are entirely separate entities, yet when presented with the chance

But wait, this sickness, this anxiety of mortality, is all brought about by objects.

Objects should not touch because they are not alive. You use them, put them back in place, you live among them. They are useful, nothing more.

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But they touch me, it is unbearable.

I am afraid of being in contact with them as though they were living beasts.

Voices start to float from across the rooftops, over the stage curtains that seem to have entrapped me in this illusion that only entraps you once you realise what it truly is.

Human kind cannot bear much reality. It’s strange that words are so inadequate. Yet, like the asthmatic struggling for breath, so the lover must struggle for words. And I must struggle to convey this experience to… no one it seems.

I suppose our difficulties of the moment must always be dealt with somehow, but our permanent difficulties are difficulties of every moment.

The glass cracks.

What if I break through these curtains, this glass globe, only to find that the illusion exists outside of this particular microcosm?

What if all of existence is just an extension of this nausea?

Maybe I’m going mad. What is existence? What is reality? Do I exist? Am I real? Am I a fabrication of another’s existence? Am I merely a mirror for others to see the reflection of their own foibles in?

I jump up: it would be much better if I could only stop thinking. Thoughts are the dullest things. Duller than flesh.

They stretch out and there’s no end to them and they leave a funny taste in the mouth. Then there are words, inside the thoughts, unfinished words, a sketchy sentence which constantly returns: “I have to fi… I ex… Dead…

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Madame de Roll is dead… I am not …

I ex…” It goes, it goes… and there’s no end to it. It’s worse than the rest because I feel responsible and have complicity in it. For example, this sort of painful rumination: I exist, I am the one who keeps it up.

I. The body lives by itself once it has begun. But though I am the one who continues it, unrolls it. I exist. How serpentine is this feeling of existing, I unwind it, slowly…

If I could keep myself from thinking!

I try, and succeed: my head seems to fill with smoke… and then it starts again: “no thought... don’t think; no time to think...”

I think I don’t want to think.

I mustn’t think that I don’t want to think.

Because that’s still a thought. Will there never be an end to it?

Perhaps it’s inevitable, perhaps one has to choose between being nothing at all and impersonating what one is.

Perhaps the meaning and purpose in life is merely your existence.

And in the end, existence is dependent upon the continued support of the self.

Existence cannot exist without the self.

There is a sudden gust of wind, and the Rue de Tournebrande becomes a flurry of pure white snowflakes. My vision becomes a phosphene of static and real snow.

DYLAN PENNIKET

Except for a singular, ash-stained snowflake.

In the midst of the blizzard, it continues upon its lazy path, drifting, floating, ever down, ever lightly, undisturbed by the undetermined chaos and disorder around it, continuing on its own path.

It comes before my eyes, like a cancerous butterfly in a bloomless spring, and settles on my nose.

Its task is complete.

The sickness ebbs.

Maybe it’s not about finding an inherent meaning behind existence.

Maybe we are just an insignificant speck of dust on the telescope lens of the universe.

But what does that mean for us?

What changes with that knowledge?

The nature of the universe doesn’t rend itself untwine upon your individual realisation that you are not destined for a higher purpose.

No, the absurd man will not commit suicide in the face of the futility of existence; he wants to live, without relinquishing any of his certainty, without a future, without hope, without illusions… and without resignation either. He stares at death with passionate attention and this fascination liberates him. He experiences the “divine irresponsibility” of the condemned man.

Meaning is meaningless.

The nausea isn’t gone. But it is no longer mine to bear. I am the nausea, I am the objects that so sickened me.

I exist. It is soft, so soft, so slow, the snow. And light: it seems as though it suspends in the air. It moves.

And I move through it.

I brush the snowflake from my nose and put the snowglobe back on the shelf as I prepare to leave the gallery souvenir store.

A rush of cold hits as I exit through the gift shop doors.

Roxbury seems so far away.

In a pointless world that is merely a stage, live your life as if it is an illusion. There are no rules beyond that which you make for yourself.

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Balancing the Present with the Future The Implications of Time Inconsistent Preferences on Choice

A. Ghazi Ahamat

Coherent decision making requires making choices between events at different points in time (intertemporal choices), whether making commitments for the future, deciding when to consume and when to save, or making investment decisions. It has long been understood that individuals value future outcomes less than the present. Economics, finance and other decision sciences have traditionally modelled this phenomenon using a simple framework of what is called exponential discounting of future outcomes, see below. However, the insights from behavioural economics show that exponential discounting is inadequate for modelling human behaviour, as it fails to capture the important behavioural phenomena of present bias and hyperbolic discounting. Present bias represents an important consideration when analysing intertemporal choice, and seriously complicates welfare evaluations of different decisions and policies.

The conceptual frameworks in which ‘conventional’ economics looks at valuation over time, that is exponential discounting, are the principles of ‘time value of money’ and Discounted Utility. Irving Fisher developed these ideas into a comprehensive account of interest rates, which was an early focus of studies of intertemporal choice.1 Interest rate theory has dominated traditional economic notions of intertemporal preferences, given the proliferation of financial instruments to undertake transactions based on present values of future events.

However it was Paul Samuelson who framed the intertemporal decision problem in terms of maximising an additive discounted utility function:2

where each xt is the utility of each time period, and δ=1/(1+α) is a discount factor with a being the rate of discount per period. α>0 implies that β is less than 1. In first introducing this model, Samuelson recognised the arbitrariness of this functional form, cautioning that it was a hypothesis, subject to refutation by the observable facts.”3 While the arbitrariness and lack of realism was noted at the time, the mathematical simplicity and tractability of this approach meant that over the years Discounted Utility was largely adopted as an axiom of intertemporal choice, rather than a basic hypothesis that approximates, but does not fully capture, the nature of time preference.4 This form of discounting is known as ‘exponential discounting’, due to its functional form in continuous time (where the length of each time period diminishes to an infinitesimal length):

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In this form, α is the rate of discount for an infintessimally short period of time.

Despite the mathematical beauty and simplicity of this approach, exponential discounting has two key implications that are inconsistent with observations of economic behaviour. Firstly, the exponential functional form exhibits what is known as “time consistent preferences,”5 where evaluating outcomes is independent of the time at which the evaluation is made. If, at time t, an individual prefers a set of outcomes A over B they will, at any other time, prefer A over B. However, empirical observations of economic behaviour suggest a notion of “present biased preferences”6 in which the present has a special weight of its own, a weight which makes the present especially valuable. For example, an individual may prefer $10 today over $11 tomorrow and yet prefer $11 in 7 days time to $10 in 6 days time. Note the inconsistency implied by these preferences. Today an individual chooses the $11 outcome for 7 days hence, but later, in 6 days time, the individual changes to a preference for the $10 on that day. This idea is explored in the literature on addiction, suicide, procrastination (with the ever so self-referential example of delaying to write a paper), delaying gratification and savings decisions.

Furthermore, the exponential discounting model has as a defining characteristic a weak preference for more choice. If more alternative actions are provided to the individual in an intertemporal choice situation, they will either be better off (by being provided an alternative that they take) or indifferent (if their existing choice is better than that choice that has been added). This assumption is consistent with the libertarian intuition that more freedom of choice cannot make people worse off, and makes sense within the notion of rationality supposed by neoclassical economics.

However, this notion is incompatible with the observed behaviour of ‘commitment devices’, where individuals willingly undertake (and indeed, spend real resources in obtaining) contractual devices that bind or constrain the actions of their future selves.

In the example in the previous paragraph, the individual chooses a commitment device that will prevent the reversal of choice to the $10 outcome when the sixth day arrives. Choosing a commitment device makes no sense in the time consistent model of preferences, as a decision made in the future should be optimal regardless of the point of evaluation. In “denying choice and ignoring [the] revealed preferences”7 of the future self, individuals are either behaving irrationally, and indeed wastefully in expending real resources to obtain commitment devices, or are exhibiting preferences incompatible with the exponential discounting model.

Despite these inconsistencies with economic behaviour, the theoretical assumption of exponential discounting was accepted without much challenge until the emergence of an alternative approach within the psychology and behavioural economics literature.

A number of experimental results in animal and human behaviour showed that rather than a constant rate of discounting, decisions are made with an approximately

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hyperbolic discounting form:8

The notable difference with exponential discounting is that the rate of discounting is proportional to the relative length of time from the period of evaluation, rather than the absolute length of time between periods. This means that the difference between $5 today and tomorrow is proportionally greater than that between $5 a year from now against $5 a year and 1 day from now.

Recognising the importance of present bias in intertemporal choice, the hyperbolic discounting model can be simplified by adopting a ‘Quasi-Hyperbolic’ discounting model, adopted by Laibson which is a good approximation of hyperbolic discounting over discrete time:9

This simplification captures the insight of hyperbolic discounting that the present (which is not discounted by beta) is valued more highly than future periods. Because preferences of this form treat the present period differently to all future periods (placing higher value on utility today), this model is also described as ‘present bias’.

Note that the present bias factor does not affect the comparison of outcomes at different future dates, such as $11 in 7 days time compared with $6 in 6 days time but it does affect the comparison of an outcome now with an outcome at any time in the future.10

This present bias is complicated by the fact that intertemporal decision making with present bias is affected by an individual’s own prediction of whether their future decisions will be influenced by present bias, that is whether they anticipate the influence of present bias. To cast light on this dimension, O’Donoghue and Rabin introduce the concept of “naïfs and sophisticates”11 to model two idealised cases of prediction with present bias. While a neoclassical optimising individual exhibits exponentially discounted preferences, both naïfs and sophisticates exhibit present bias. Naïfs are unaware of their present bias, and so make decisions as though their current preferences will persist. Thus a naïf would not choose a commitment device.

Sophisticates accurately perceive their future present bias, and so will evaluate the optimal decision by backward induction from their expected future behaviour.

Sophisticates may choose a commitment device. These different types of individuals will exhibit very different optimal decisions, given the same preference structure.

While in reality individual agents are likely to fall between these extreme examples, O’Donoghue and Rabin use these examples to isolate the effects of time-inconsistent preferences (the difference between time consistent and naïf decisions) and prediction

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effects (the difference between naïfs and sophisticates), which are related but separate consequences of present biased preferences.

The behavioural impacts of present bias are shown clearly in these two types of individuals. Compared to the time consistent individual, both types of present biased individuals may delay costly actions into the future (where their disutility is discounted by beta) even if costs increase. They may also take actions to receive benefits early (where they are not subject to discounting) rather than delaying gratification to a future point of greater benefit.12 The prediction effect of the ‘sophisticate’ complicated matters. In the case of costs, the prediction of future present bias mitigates the delay effect of costs; as they expect to delay in future periods, they may bring costs forward relative to naïfs. However, in the case of future benefits, the prediction effect may actually exacerbate the instant gratification effect as sophisticates expect to be too weak willed to resist temptation in future periods, so they ‘may as well’ consume the benefits now.

These models of intertemporal decision making under present bias can explain a wide variety of economic behaviour. They explain why individuals may procrastinate by delaying costly but necessary tasks, as at each moment of choosing whether to complete or delay the task, the discounted cost of delaying the task into the future seems less than the apparent cost of doing the task now. Furthermore, present bias explains the use of costly commitment devices, where an individual with (incomplete) perceptions of their present bias in future periods will attempt to constrain their future choice set in order to eliminate the possibility of being tempted in the future.13 This is seen in making tempting behaviour more costly such as making a promise to another that will need to be broken in order to obtain the temporary benefits or delay the costly actions, or the setting of arbitrary deadlines in order to set a limitation on the ability to delay costly actions.

Present bias can also explain the psychology of addictive consumption, where the individual may consume a product (eg drugs, smoking, indulgent foods) in the future when their preferences in the present are to resist temptation in the future. While there is an account of ‘rational addiction’ that is compatible with time consistent preferences, the notion of present bias provides a richer explanation of this behaviour.14 Present bias also presents important insights for consumer decision making where short-term appeal will have more of an impact on buying decisions than longer term benefits, considering that these short term appeals have a higher impact on preferences at the time that the decision is made.

Additionally, present bias helps to explain the excessive use of credit cards, which are a very high cost method of obtaining credit, but makes purchasing decisions give more utility as the ‘cost of purchase’ is delayed from the time at which the decision is made.

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Present bias plays an important role in lifetime savings decisions, particularly in the decision to save for retirement. While the neoclassical model with time consistent preferences suggests that individuals will smooth consumption over their expected lifetime, that is save while working in order to prevent a catastrophic fall in consumption when retired, the effects of present bias means that individuals will (all else equal) consume too much and save too little for retirement, relative to the ideal proposed by the life-cycle model.

Present bias also brings important insights to issues of economic policy around sustainability and intergenerational equity. Aside from the issues of inadequate savings for retirement, present bias means that individuals may place much higher value on present consumption relative to the consumption in the future. While the welfare implications of these findings are unclear (as will be explored shortly), the neoclassical model of time-consistent preferences will be inadequate to analyse the decision making of individuals and societies about issues of economic sustainability, environmental policy, investment decisions, preferences around infrastructure investment, pension policy and taxation policy (particularly about consumption taxes).

In taking the insights of time inconsistent preferences to understand economic behaviour, intertemporal decision making should also take into account the interaction of present bias with other behavioural effects and cognitive biases, including status quo bias, prospect theory and mental accounting.

It is not entirely clear which of these other phenomena in economic decisions are compatible claims to the idea of present bias, and which are actually competing explanations for the same behaviour. To use consumer behaviour as an analogy, it is unclear to what extent these behavioural frameworks are ‘substitutes’ rather than ‘complements’ to present biased preferences in explaining economic decision making. However, there are some important interactions between these concepts that exacerbate the impact of present bias.

In considering present bias in the quasi-hyperbolic discounting form and considering decisions being made in discrete rather than continuous time, the concepts of mental accounting and resetting of the reference point in prospect theory are important for understanding the notion of ‘present’ in evaluations under present bias. In particular, the notion of closing a “mental account”15 represents a good behavioural model to understand the difference between the present and future periods. In particular, the notion of the ‘present’ may differ widely between the types of decisions being considered. In buying a coffee, the present period may be a matter of minutes, whereas the costs and benefits of buying a house may consider the present period as months or even years. The very different evaluation of present as opposed to future periods makes this an important effect to be considered in understanding individual decision making.

Furthermore, the idea of “loss aversion”16 with respect to a reference point means

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that decisions are sensitive to the reference point from which the decision is being evaluated. A decision that involves a loss in the present period (after which the reference point is reset) in exchange for future gains will be less attractive under prospect theory than under a straightforward evaluation of costs and benefits, which compounds the effects of present bias in delaying costs and bringing forward gains.

Present bias brings important positive insights into how individuals will deviate systematically from the neoclassical assumptions about intertemporal choice.

Furthermore, the analysis of hyperbolic and quasi-hyperbolic discounting allows for a comparison of how individuals (naïve, sophisticated or somewhere in between) can deviate from the time consistent individual, as highlighted by O’Donoghue and Rabin.17 However, the normative analysis of intertemporal choice is now complicated by the fact that individuals no longer have consistent preferences, leading to the large question with significant welfare implications: in a world where the preferences of individuals are inconsistent over time, whose preferences do we take seriously?

One possible conclusion, made by O’Donoghue and Rabin, is to evaluate decisions without present bias (what they call the “long term perspective”18), and establish this as the behavioural norm. This view takes seriously the neoclassical notion of time consistent preferences, and treats present bias as just that: a ‘bias’ that prevents individuals from making the right choices, and the decisions made by both naïfs and sophisticates are ‘mistakes’ in so far as they deviate from time consistency. There is some evidence from the nature of compound growth of physical phenomena (which exhibits exponential growth) that suggests that this may be a ‘norm’ in some sense. But just as the early thinkers about time preference considered constant (undiscounted) time as the norm from which ‘discounted’ preferences deviated, there is a point at which normative theory must take seriously the decisions people actually make, at least to some extent.19 An alternative view is that inspired by treating the equilibrium concepts of sequential game theory as a normative ideal, with the ‘rational perceptions’ of the sophisticate reflecting an accurate picture of future decisions, and a ‘perception perfect strategy’ that takes into account future actions represents the right way to reason about decision making under present bias. This appears to be the dominant way of thinking about present bias in the literature, but it fails to take into account the mental costs of developing such complete insights about future preferences, and does not correspond to the notion of bounded rationality that is also prevalent in behavioural economics.

The sophisticate may represent an unrealistic standard for present biased individuals.20 21 22

It is generally acknowledged that the behaviour of the naïf (maximising experienced utility at each point in time, ignoring the changes in preferences over time) is not rational, as the expectations of future decisions are not taken into account. However, there is the difficulty of what input do present biased preferences have in welfare

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considerations. It is certainly not the case that they should have no value, and it is unclear how this should be fed into overall welfare evaluations.

A fourth possibility, not explored by O’Donoghue and Rabin, is to consider the decision evaluated in hindsight. This view calls on the work of Kahneman et. al. in exploring the idea of “remembered utility.”23 This view seems to run counter to the grain of mainstream economics, with the basic maxim of ‘ignoring sunk costs’ capturing the more traditional aphorism to ‘let bygones be bygones’. However, Kahneman et. al. make an important distinction in their paper between ‘experienced utility’ and ‘decision utility’, where decisions can be made in terms of prospective utility of the future (using a framework like prospect theory) but can be evaluated in hindsight by the remembered experience of utility as it happened in the past.

Furthermore, pursuing this method of evaluating intertemporal choice is complicated by further issues of memory, as the ‘present bias’ effect works in both directions, and remembered utility suffers from its own set of behavioural biases.24 These debates on welfare evaluations cannot be resolved without making normative claims about how to compare the utility outcomes. In a sense, time inconsistent preferences leads to a sort of distributional debate, in which the ‘fair’ distribution of utility between an agent’s present, future and past ‘selves’ is unclear. This multiple ‘selves’ approach brings to bear the normative dimensions of evaluating intertemporal choices, as Thomas Schelling explored in the scenarios of suicide and pain relief.25 Alternatively, an ‘intrapersonal game theory’ approach to analysing intertemporal choice can show that of ‘intra-person competition’ between current and future selves leads to situations that the individual has no incentive to deviate from their behaviour at any point in time, given their past and future behaviour(a Subgame Perfect Nash Equilibrium), but could lead to significantly sub-optimal outcomes for an individual at a particular point in time.26 When encountering questions of distribution, economic analysis often relies on weaker concepts of normative efficiency, such as Pareto improvement (making some periods better off and making no periods worse off ). However, intertemporal choice will rarely, if ever, face these situations in reality given that costs and benefits are incurred by the same ‘self ’ at different points in time. This means that normative evaluations of decisions under present bias cannot avoid making stronger normative claims about intertemporal distribution of utility. Economists should be cautious when drawing normative conclusions from the results of a descriptive model. In assuming that the ‘sophisticated’ decision maker is behaving rationally, and other outcomes are deviating from this ideal, normative analysis can lead to misguided conceptions of the optimal outcome, such as expecting an unreasonably high ‘optimal’ level of retirement savings.27 Without making an explicit claim to a normative standard, analysis of intertemporal choice under present bias is overstepping its limitations when going beyond the quite limited potential of Pareto efficiency analysis. Some economists, such as Schelling, do not shy from this, saying that in many decisions about whose utility to take

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seriously (such as whether to prevent a person in a temporary moment of despair from committing suicide, or perform a painful but life-saving operation without anaesthetic in an emergency) the decision enters the world of moral rather than economic analysis.

In these cases, Pareto efficiency is going to be an inadequate basis for welfare analysis.28 Present bias represents an important deviation from the neoclassical model of intertemporal decision making. The tendency to place higher relative value on present outcomes has significant effects on decision-making on savings decisions, costly but necessary actions, delaying gratification, addictive consumption, purchasing decisions and policies that involve trading off benefits and costs that are dispersed through time.

Understanding present bias brings a great deal of insight in the descriptive analysis of decision making. However, the temporal inconsistency of preferences makes welfare evaluations deeply problematic, as it is not clear which preferences to take seriously, and what distributional concerns need to be made between the different preferences that an individual experiences over time.

endnotes 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

Irving Fisher, The Theory of Interest, 1st, (New York: MacMillan, 1930).

Paul Samuelson, ‘A Note on Measurement of Utility,’ Review of Economic Studies, 1937.

Ibid.

George Loewenstein, ‘The Fall and Rise of Psychological Explanations in the Economics of Intertemporal Choice,’ Choice Over Time 3, no. 34, (1992).

Ted O’Donoghue, and Matthew Rabin, ‘Doing it Now or Later,’ The American Economic Review 89, no. 1, (1999): 106.

Ibid, 106.

Thomas Schelling, ‘Egonomics, or the Art of Self Management,’ The American Economic Review (1978): 9.

George W. Ainslie, ‘Specious Reward: A Behavioural Theory of Impulsiveness and Impulse Control,’ Psychological Bulletin LXXXII (1975).

David Laibson, ‘Golden Eggs and Hyperbolic Discounting,’ The Quarterly Journal of Economics 112, no. 2 (1997) This can also be extended to evaluations of past utility.

However, economic analysis of intertemporal choice,

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

typically assumes that past utility is sunk (ie cannot be changed), and so will not (or perhaps in more normative terms, should not) make a marginal impact on decision making.

O’Donoghue and Rabin, ‘Doing it Now or Later.’

While these effects are shown to be possible, the fact whether these delays and early gratification will exist depends on the preference structure of a particular choice.

Thomas Schelling, ‘Self Control in Practice, in Policy, and in a Theory of Rational Choice,’ The American Economic Review 74, no. 2 (1984).

Gary Becker, Michael Grossman, and Kevin M. Murphy, ‘Rational Addiction and the Effect of Price on Consumption,’ The American Economic Review 81, no. 2 (1991).

Richard Thaler, ‘Mental Accounting Matters,’ Journal of Behavioural Decision Making 12 (1999).

Amos Tversky, and Daniel Kahneman, ‘Loss Aversion in Riskless Choice,’ Quarterly Journal of Economics 106, no.

4 (1991).

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17.

18.

19.

20.

21.

22.

23.

24.

25.

26.

27.

28.

O’Donoghue and Rabin, ‘Doing it Now or Later.’

Ibid, 113.

Loewenstein, ‘The Fall and Rise of Psychological Explanations in the Economics of Intertemporal Choice.’

Ibid.

Schelling, ‘Self Control in Practice, in Policy, and in a Theory of Rational Choice.’

O’Donoghue and Rabin, ‘Doing it Now or Later.’

Daniel Kahneman, Peter P. Wakker, and Rakesh Sarin, ‘Back to Bentham? Explorations of Experienced Utility,’ The Quarterly Journal of Economics 112, no. 2 (1997).

Ibid.

Schelling, ‘Egonomics, or the Art of Self Management.’

Min Ding, ‘A Theory of Intraperson Games,’ Journal of Marketing 71, no. 2 (2007).

Richard Thaler, and Schlomo Bernatzi, ‘Save More Tomorrow(tm): Using Behavioural Economics to Increase Employee Saving,’ The Journal of Political Economy 112, no.

1 (2004).

Schelling, ‘Self Control in Practice, in Policy, and in a Theory of Rational Choice.’

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The House of Cards Eliza Kluckow

No playing card can stand alone in a battle for the height.

He will fall and slip and tumble, no matter how hard he holds the fight.

But if he had another - perhaps the four of spades, Then he could gain support upon a card used as his aid.

Dependant now the stronger pair would be upon the other.

Dependant how the fearless pair would be on one another!

If one does slip, the other too will slide across the table.

But up theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll jump to try again and this time keep it stable!

Other cards do join the fight, preparing to help out.

To make the highest house of cards - ever known about!

To have a castle of so high for it to be resplendent Then all the cards must fit together - they must be co-dependant!

So you place one down (the Queen of hearts?) and let the next one lean.

They both stay put, they both stay up, a revelation has been seen!

Now if the structure does get higher then more packs you will need.

So ring around to all your friends and beg and borrow and plead.

And when the house has reached its peak, it must have a safe guard.

Surround it, secure it, protect it - watch each and every card.

But if a puff of wind does come, then you must let it be.

Unless your weakest card is tempted to give into gravity!

And then your cards will drift down again like crisp red autumn leaves.

Dancing, spinning, twirling on the lively autumn breeze.

But if that one card had stayed strong, for the other suits good sake, Then perhaps the pyramid would have stayed up til morning light did break.

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“ Rapid developments in medical science and practice have brought into focus new questions. […] Attention is often drawn to the power now in the hands of the doctor to keep people alive at the beginning and end of life. Because you can do something, should you do it? ” Davis McCaughey

The Moral Code of DNA Stephanie McMahon

Introduction Watson and Crick’s1 discovery of Deoxyribonucleic Acid (DNA), the basic building block of life,2 in the Twentieth Century, sparked immense interest in the origins and composition of human life. Finally, science seemed to have a response to the age-old question – what do we come from? However, since this discovery was made in a society that places a large emphasis on economic success, there were, and still are, people who wish to try to own and gain profit from knowledge of the human genome.3 This development raises several key questions. Firstly, what is ownership in a modern context? Secondly, what should and should not be owned? Thirdly, is there any way that copyrighting segments of the human genome can be considered moral? In this essay, I will explain and critically evaluate property laws as they apply today, especially in the realm of intellectual property, and will examine the moral status of the human genome. Since moral status can be plausibly ascribed to the human genome, I will analyse the morality of appropriating segments of the human genome to specific parties. I will argue that although intellectual property rights are necessary parts in developing human knowledge, the use of them for pure financial gain is ethically questionable. I will also consider the key positions on moral status and personhood, and argue that although human DNA has no intrinsic moral status, its effect on humans means that it must be taken into moral consideration. Finally, I will consider the conditions under which such intellectual property rights should be given out to individual parties.

Ownership, Property, and Intellectual Property in a Bioethical Context To be able to discuss the many issues relating to ownership, property, and intellectual property, it is of critical importance that we first define these terms. Ownership, taken generally, is an individual party’s right to access, manipulate, and distribute material resources and land; ‘property rights’ is the general term for rules governing access to and control of land and other material resources.4 These rules restrict us from unjustly removing, that is, stealing, the property (that which is owned), of another without their permission, and allow the owners the exclusive

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control rights over those assets.

It is at this point we must define some key terms, and a discussion of the meaning of value must occur for us to be able to ascribe some meaning to these objects.

There are arguably three main subsets of ‘valuable’ objects. Firstly, there is of course what is referred to as ‘intrinsic value’, or that which is valuable in itself. From this, there are objects that derive their value from the usefulness to something with an intrinsic value, otherwise known as ’instrumental value’. Finally, there are objects that have ‘extrinsic value’, due to the values that society prescribes to them, such as monetary or social value. This is an important distinction to set up in discussing property and ownership.

However, one of the key concerns of this essay pertains to intellectual property, which, unlike the general understanding of ownership and property, pertains to ownership of abstract concepts and ideas. According to the World Intellectual Property Organisation intellectual property is a term describing “creations of the mind”,5 which include, but are not limited to “inventions, literary and artistic works, symbols, names, images, and designs used in commerce.”6 In copyrighting their intellectual property, authors, creators, and artists have “the right to claim authorship of the work.” 7 This means that in a market society, these authors have an exclusive commercial right in which they uniquely are able to charge “royalties” 8 to parties who wish to use their work.

Intellectual property rights exist so that “the rights of creators and owners of intellectual property are protected worldwide, and that inventors and authors are thus recognized and rewarded for their ingenuity.”9 In the realm of scientific patenting, it is feasible to suggest that without the economic protection provided by intellectual property rights, many scientific facilities would be unable to continue their vital research.10 Therefore much of scientific research would cease due to lack of fiscal support, and human scientific progress would slow and eventually cease. However, are scientists justified in claiming exclusive usage and access to these patents?

A central justification of property rights comes from John Locke, who claims that every human being has an intrinsic right to the ownership of their own bodies which nobody has “any right to but [themselves].”11 If one owns one’s own body, then one must own any action or labour exerted by this body; a person owns any labour that they do with their body. Therefore, if a human being exerts labour upon a natural object, removing it from its “common state,”12 - being the state in which it naturally exists – and combining it with their own labour, the object logically becomes their property. This, when put into the context of “owning” sections of the human genome, seems to be coherent: the scientist, in decoding the gene, has laboured on it, analysed it, discovered its purpose, and therefore, in understanding this specific gene segment to a greater standard than that of its “common state,” and binding it with their own labour, has, as Locke would assert, an “unquestion-

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able” claim of property rights over this segment of DNA. 13 Yet is this labour sufficient to claim ownership? This brings up the idea of whether someone merits the gaining of something through their labour, or whether they have simply lost that labour. For example, if someone deliberately poured a bucket of tomato soup into the ocean, it requires labour that is necessarily owned by the labourer, and has removed the ocean from its common state. However, the question that must be asked here is whether the person gained the ocean, or lost the tomato soup.14 They’ve clearly moved the ocean from its common state to something greater, yet the labour they have exerted is so insignificant in comparison to the whole that granting that person ownership of the entire ocean is clearly ridiculous if we exercise common sense. Similarly, an understanding of segments of DNA does not necessarily add anything to the base idea. Albeit, the scientist would have spent hours in the laboratory analysing and researching data to “discover” the coding of that gene, yet in defining it, they have not added a substantial amount. All that they apparently have done is explained it conceptually – added some tomato soup to the ocean of genetic information. However, according to Locke, exerting labour infers an object with greater instrumental value, and hence implies that the labourer has an unquestionable claim over this property.

In a market society, the extrinsic value attributed to any object depends, partly, on the potential to exclude people from using it. In such a society, all further extrinsic value created by labour belongs to one specific party. Nonetheless, could there also be other contributing factors to this added extrinsic value? For example, in sequencing a specific gene segment, a scientist must rely on prior knowledge of the human genomic code, such as that from the Human Genome Project. Yet in granting that specific party exclusive copyright, one is ignoring all the other possible contributors to that final product. Human beings do not live in a “vacuum”: it is unreasonable to ignore prior concepts and discoveries that contribute to the decoding of any particular gene - scientific research is generally based on previous researchers’ work.

Moreover, the only apparent extrinsic value possibly attributable to genetic property is a financial one, constructed by commercialised societies motivated by monetary gain. However, is it not true that genetic research holds other intrinsic values as important, such as human life, health care, and the betterment of medical treatment? In giving these parties patenting rights over genetic information, one seemingly undermines these intrinsic values, ignoring the central goal of research.

We seem to have mixed the extrinsic market value with the intrinsic values of the society in commodifying abstract concepts through copyright.

In granting the scientists who decode genes an unquestionable claim over their intellectual property, this implies that this exclusive group alone can be granted full and unrestricted usage. Although exclusive usage is necessary when grant-

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ing general property rights, we must consider that intellectual property rights are discussing abstract property. Abstract property, unlike physical objects, when taken and used by another party does not restrict the other party’s access. For example, a person may have ownership of a bike. This bike may be their only transport, and if taken by someone else, they can no longer access it, causing great inconvenience.

On the other hand, abstract concepts, such as decoded DNA, can be used simultaneously by two people without impeding on each other’s access. The only thing that they could do to deprive each other is possible remuneration. Simply giving out this information to patients has no apparent cost, except that of electricity when using the equipment during the test and the medium of information. It may be that they deserve this profit; however the exorbitant costs, which are currently inflicted on patients carrying a genetic disorder, are beyond what is deserved, even considering the costs of original research. However, the notion of exclusivity brought about by intellectual property rights is necessary in creating a greater extrinsic value. This assists in repaying debts on the original development of these tests, and supports the growth and further development of the scientific field.

Technically, if a certain gene pattern within the DNA molecule can be identified with a specific trait, that trait can be identified in all other humans whose DNA contains that specific sequence.15 Furthermore, if they patent it, they theoretically own the concept of this genetic information in all genetic segments. If the same rules were to be applied universally to other professions that seek to understand the human body, an anatomist, who has spent years examining a single bone structure within the foot, would be ethically able to charge a ‘royalty’ every time a therapist worked on that specific bone structure using the anatomist’s knowledge. It is thus arguable that in copyrighting sections of the body, one is infringing on the previously established right to the property of one’s own body, a point that shall be discussed later on in this essay.

Be that as it may, the rights of the scientist must be considered and must be compared to those rights, which are obstructed by the exclusivity of property rights. In a free and democratic market society, the monetary value of any object is created through the construct of that community. It is well known that a whole range of criteria change the actual extrinsic value of the object – but one reason for an increase in extrinsic value of any product is its rarity and excludability in that community’s marketplace. In giving exclusive usage and access to only one party, the object in question seems to immediately increase in extrinsic value. When an object is in high demand, such as several types of genetic information, it gives the owner the ability to raise its price, and is evidently of huge financial benefit to the proprietor.

Yet, does this potential for great financial benefit amount to giving that party exclusive intellectual property rights? One of the key criticisms of intellectual property rights is that they give that individual party the right to withhold or abstain

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from giving out that information unless a royalty is paid. Locke establishes several principles in his definition of property, which must be considered. One of the most important principles is that human beings should not harm one another or intentionally withhold information that could cause harm in the execution of our exclusive property rights.16 For example, if one gathers all the fresh fruit, precluding others from eating healthily, one is denying sustenance, causing harm to another. In genetics, when a possibly dangerous gene is found in one’s DNA (like the BRCA gene17), it can indicate dangerous or possibly fatal consequences, and still, there are laboratories around the world which impose relatively expensive testing fees for this genetic knowledge to be passed onto the patient. Here it seems that these intellectual property rights are excluding patients from the right to a potentially better life, and one free of disease and full of good health. Private parties are seemingly abusing their property rights by denying what each person intrinsically owns: their own bodies.

Examination of Morally Contentious Areas of Ownership To examine whether DNA is copyrightable, we must first assume that human life and objects of moral status (or personhood) have some sort of inviolable, intrinsic value that cannot be questioned. In previous discussion it was suggested that the ownership of objects of moral status violates intrinsic rights. To examine this issue, we must first examine the moral positions on moral status, and further discuss to what extent a gene segment is an object of intrinsic moral status.

Yet why do beings of personhood demand such moral respect? In Kantian philosophy, for an act to be moral, it must comply with Kant’s two Categorical Imperatives. The first is that one must “act by that maxim which you can at the same time will as a universal law,” that is, if it can be universalised and not cause chaos or disharmony or offence, it is moral; secondly, and most pertinent to the issue of treating beings of personhood, one must never use another being of personhood as a means to an end.18 This is due to Kant’s belief that human beings are ends-inthemselves, and to treat them in any other fashion is to ignore their intrinsic value.

In assuming a view of morality in which humans have a higher moral status than other species, DNA must exhibit some basic key qualities in order to achieve personhood. According to some perspectives, for a being to be considered a “commonsense person”19 (a conscious human as we know them), it must be “aware, have a concept of itself, have emotions, be able to reason, be able to communicate with other common-sense people, plan, be able to act on plans, and furthermore, it must be able to feel pleasure and pain.”20 DNA seems to not comply with any of these criteria as it is only a collection of chemicals. Gene sequences are only a small collection of compounds, unable to act or communicate, which is what we would expect from something that has attained personhood. Therefore, DNA does not

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attain personhood. Nevertheless, DNA is an instrumental part of beings of personhood, as it defines us as a species.

In claiming ownership over a genetic sequence, and giving it a market value, owners of genetic information arguably use this fundamental part of human identity as a means to a financial end, which ignores the notion that beings of personhood are ends in themselves. Instead of treating the DNA as such an instrumental part of beings of personhood, they become a means to a fiscal end, which seems unethical.

Organ trafficking is an example of the immorality of using the parts of beings of personhood as a means to an end in a market situation. This is clearly a morally problematic market. Organs are not beings of personhood: a liver or lung separate from a person’s body is just a piece of organic matter. However, these organs, when internalised, are intrinsic to our day-to-day survival. Without these vital organs, we are not able to live a full and complete life. Forcibly removing and selling these parts of the human body could be considered as oppressing a human’s right to the property of their own body, not to mention that doing so is murder. This could result in an inequality of power where one is able to use the other as a means to the end, denying their personhood. It is arguable that organ trafficking could be considered analogous to copyrighting segments of DNA, which is intrinsically part of the human existence. Granting property rights to parties wishing to give a market value to the knowledge of the human genome is seemingly selling parts of human existence; in so much as organs are parts of the human body, so is DNA. In granting patents on parts of the human body such as genes, it is evident that we are using these beings of personhood as a means to an end, and not an end-inthemselves, for the individual who owns the property rights has reduced ‘person’ to a monetary value.

Hence, it appears that in buying and selling parts of the human body, we are buying and selling parts of the human existence, and treating objects of personhood as means to an end. The human genome is evidently part of the human body: it is the blueprint from which we are created. Arguably, by itself, the chemical may not hold any specific extrinsic value; however its application and use in our everyday existence grants it much importance. As previously established, without our biological parts, our mind, and furthermore, our human existence, would not be the same.

The Moral Perspectives on Copyrighting DNA The conflict between the rights of the scientist to gain recognition for their work, and the rights of human beings to have their personhood respected appears to be the crux of this debate. In applying for a patent on a segment of the human genome, the applicant is attempting to buy what is intrinsically part of the biological make-up of the person, which apparently infringes on the right to the property

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of one’s own body. It is also clear that the scientists have added something to it – for without careful analysis, all that the segment would appear to be is a collection of chemicals, rather than a code describing what eye colour that person has, or whether that person is predisposed to breast cancer, heart disease, stroke, Alzheimer’s disease, et cetera.21 One could maintain that in their research, these scientists are modifying genes for the good of the person, and are therefore entitled to protect their work from false authorship claims. However, as has been previously argued, this treats human beings as a means to an end, and is thus immoral. Yet, the question remains, what brings the most good for all persons in the community?

The field of medical research arguably desires the improvement of health of human beings, and the human condition. The Hippocratic Oath, upon which every doctor must swear to “do no harm,”22 underlines the virtues of the profession. Yet if we introduce property rights into this field, we create a market framework in which all actions, tests, and treatment have a concrete, monetary value. It seems that the profit motive introduced by this market system may undermine the intrinsic values of the profession in the interest of more commercial virtues. This placement of worth on money rather than the benefits for humankind seems to create an ethically dubious system where the altruism of medical care is undermined.

However, contextualising this problem in our modern society, financial incentives are required to cover the costs of scientific experimentation, and inspire scientists to undertake research. This is most easily attained through gaining property rights over their work. If we were to completely remove the use of these property rights based on our seeming duty to protect our personhood, and regulate the research system so that no one would be able to gain a profit from the parts of the human body, the field of medical research would arguably come to a halt. Potentially, no new research would be undertaken due to a lack of financial incentive. The profession, instead of having its intrinsic values challenged, would no longer exist, due to an inability to support itself in a commercialised society. This would be detrimental for all people, as medical research brings new information about healthcare and treatments, helping society at large, bringing good, and improving our society; without it, there would be no more scientific development, one of the necessary parts of creating a state where the “progress of science and the useful arts”23 improves the human condition.

Nevertheless, these property rights arguably impede the free exchange of knowledge; according to John Stuart Mill “free thought and speech”24 are some of the most important parts of human development. If one party is given the exclusive rights to be able to withhold or give out the information that they ‘own’, this evidently gives them the capability to impede the free exchange of thought and speech. Once these patents are given out, companies have a monopoly on a competitive market for the period of the patent. Hence, patents could be seen as smothering the potential for individual growth, new technological improvements,

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and, it could be argued, the flourishing of “human knowledge.”25 Conclusion Now, considering that patenting could both benefit and harm society at large, this conclusion raises the empirical question: which of the possibilities brings the most good – valuing the individual and their rights of personhood, or the good of the whole? If we are to take the perspective of those who will be most victimised by the gene patenting, the poor and sickly, who are unable to pay the fees to test for a genetic disorder, they will clearly argue the inequality and injustice of being unable to access this medical care due to their poverty. Arguably they are no longer being considered as patients who need healthcare and are being denied it, but rather as objects from which the patentees want to gain some sort of financial benefit, ignoring each person’s intrinsic value.

However, these patents provide support and incentive for the scientific community to continue their vital medical research. One of the key tenets of the medical field is to do no harm; in undertaking and supporting research through property rights, which creates new medical treatments, we help alleviate pain and suffering. Hence, if we allow patents, we are conceivably assisting with the improvement of the general health of the population. Additionally, in improving the general health of the population, we potentially improve the health of the average individual, which is respecting the intrinsic value in each being.

If we are to allow patents, encouraging ’human flourishing’, we must have in place some sort of regulation which ensures that both the good of the whole and the rights of individuals are respected. One could suggest that as persons, we are never in a strictly market relationship, as no human or part-thereof is a pure object whose emotions and volitions can be ignored without ignoring their personhood. If DNA patenting is to assure human flourishing, excessive financial remuneration should be reduced or eliminated, and other instrumental values must be emphasised, such as the free flow of information, improving health-care, and the rights of every person to a full and healthy life. A market relationship must be created in which the intrinsic value of the moral status of the individual is equally as emphasised as the possible profit and financial incentive they bring to the field of research.

In conclusion, although the pure buying and selling of human genetic information through intellectual property rights is ethically dubious, in the interest of human flourishing, regulated patents must be granted to scientific bodies to aid the development of human knowledge and health-care. This is the case, for if we are to deny these scientists’ rights to their own work, we also deny the possibility of future development of treatments to alleviate human suffering.

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endnotes 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

200

‘The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1962,’ Nobelprize. org, accessed June 16, 2010, http://nobelprize.org/ nobel_prizes/medicine/ laureates/1962/.

Southern District of New York, Association for Molecular Pathology et Al. against United States Patent and Trademark Office, et Al. No. 1:09-cv04515-RWS, (March 29, 2010): 26.

Lisa S. Cahill, ‘Genetics, Commodification, and Social Justice in the Globalization Era,’ Kennedy Institute of Ethics 11, no. 3 (2001): 221-238.

Jeremy Waldron, ‘Property,’ The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition), ed. Edward N. Zalta, http:// plato.stanford.edu/archives/ fall2008/entries/property/.

World Intellectual Property Organisation, Understanding Copyright and Related Rights, 2008, accessed from http:// www.wipo.int/freepublications/ en/intproperty/909/wipo_ pub_909.html#reprod.

Ibid.

Ibid.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Southern District of New York, Association for Molecular Pathology et Al. against United States Patent and Trademark Office, et Al, 56.

John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, (1690), accessed September 30, 2012, last updated April 1, 2012, http://www.gutenberg.org/ files/7370/7370-h/7370-h.htm Ibid.

Southern District of New York, Association for Molecular Pathology et Al. against United States Patent and Trademark Office, et Al, 43.

Edwin C. Hettinger, Justifying Intellectual Property, (Philosophy and Public Affairs, 1987).

Southern District of New York, Association for Molecular Pathology et Al. against United States Patent and Trademark Office, et Al, 24.

John Locke, The Second Treatise of Civil Government: An Essay concerning the True Original, Extent, and End of Civil Government, ed. Thomas

Stephanie McMahon

17.

18.

19.

20.

21.

22.

23.

24.

25.

I. Cook (New York: Haffner, 1947).

This gene indicates a genetic predisposition to forming breast and ovarian cancer.

BRCA gene carriers are 5 times more likely to develop breast cancer than other women who are not carriers of the gene.

Philip Stokes, Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers, (London: Arcturus Publishing Limited, 2006), 96.

Andrew Chrucky, Concepts of Persons and Morality, 1992, accessed from http:///www. ditext.com/chrucky/decelles. html.

Ibid.

Southern District of New York, Association for Molecular Pathology et Al. against United States Patent and Trademark Office, et Al, 24.

NKTI Urology, The Hippocratic Oath, 1992, accessed from http://www.members.tripod. com/nktiuro/hippocra.htm.

Hettinger, Justifying Intellectual Property.

Ibid.

Ibid.

“ To be regularly gay was to do every day the gay thing that they did every day. To be regularly gay was to end every day at the same time after they had been regularly gay.

They were regularly gay.

They were gay every day.

They ended every day in the same way, at the same time, and they had been every day regularly gay. ” Gertrude Stein Miss Furr and Miss Skene Believed to be the first use of ‘gay’ to mean homosexual in print.

A Case for Same-Sex Marriage

Martin Warren

In light of Tasmania’s decisive, albeit unsuccessful, step toward marriage equality, it is an ideal time to reaffirm the case for same-sex marriage as we slowly but surely approach the dénouement of the marriage equality story in Australia.

In recent years, the topic of same-sex marriage has been a recurrent theme in the agenda of Australian politics in what is seen as the last bastion in a much broader discussion on the equal, or rather unequal, status that surround same-sex relationship recognition under Australian law. It is this final frontier in the equality plight that has recently fuelled considerable debate on the matter, a debate that was largely ignited back in 2004 when the Howard Government amended the Marriage Act to define the custom as ”the union of a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others, voluntarily entered into for life”1 - a previously undefined institution with respect to sex, presumably because the act of marriage was seen to be patently between one man and one woman. The justification offered for this change to the Marriage Act was purported to be, to reflect “the understanding of marriage held by the vast majority of Australians,”2 a flawed explanation that is estranged from any principled or just critique of the topic; nor is it informed by evidence. In fact, the House of Representatives in April 2012 conducted a survey that found 64.3% from an overwhelming 276,000 responses, supported same-sex marriage.3 What is more, in a recent Galaxy Poll of 1,050 people, 80% of young Australians surveyed were in support of same-sex marriage, indicating a crucial trend that delineates our changing values.4 Clearly, the political reason tendered for the change to the Marriage Act no longer reflects the majority of the population’s views regarding marriage.

Rather than asking what we ought to do as a society and nation, this amendment championed by the Howard Government, mirrored the effects of enculturation and societal norms, which serve to perpetuate a comfortable familiarity and conformity with what was and still is the only legal form of marriage, i.e. heterosexual matrimony. This pattern of reflection on the issue inevitably comes at the expense of social and legal equality in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) community.

Fortunately, the year 2008 marked a tremendous turning point in the legal recognition of same-sex partnerships at the federal level, following an Australian Human

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Rights Commission report and an audit of the Commonwealth legislation, which supported the removal of discrimination in 85 Commonwealth laws across a suite of areas.5 Accordingly, it was in that year that a far-encompassing collection of reforms, under the Rudd Government, were made to a multitude of legislation concerning relationship law. In doing so, the legal entitlements already afforded to heterosexual partnerships were extended to those individuals in same-sex relationships. Despite these recent legal recognitions in the areas of social security, taxation, superannuation, employment, immigration, workers’ compensation and so forth, there remains one pivotal lingering difference between the non-heterosexual and heterosexual demographic: same-sex marriage.6 What is an undeniable distinction between two Australian subpopulations seems to have permeated across many areas of our social and cultural fabric, sparking vehement debate predominantly from the polar ends of the discussion on same-sex marriage.

There are many arguments against same-sex civil marriage, most springing from theistic texts that often, but importantly not always, present homosexuality as against nature: Peccatum contra naturam. It might interest the reader to know, that nature through the means of evolution has selected for homosexual behaviours, as observed in over 1500 different species, of which a third are well elucidated, documented and accepted in the fields of evolutionary biology and ethology (the study of animal behaviour).7 As a point of interest, there is no documented observation of non-random anti-homosexual behaviours (homophobia) in any species other than one: Homo sapiens (Modern Human). The archetypical argument against marriage equality arises from the sentiment that civil unions and other such arrangements afford (almost) the same civil entitlements that married couples receive. This pervasive argument is entrenched in the ‘separate but equal’ response from The United States during the segregation era of the 20th century.8 It is argued in this narrative that this is not an adequate response to what is, to our best empirical understanding, a biologically derived phenomenon of same-sex attraction.

The Case For Equality To speak for a moment in the realm of hypotheticals – let us suppose that our Government passed a law that does not accord individuals of different skin colours the right to marry. It does not take any great mind to formulate a cohesive and logical counter-argument to what is a uniquely moronic supposition: That the concentration of melanin and other pigments accumulated in our skin cells, as determined almost primarily by our genetic composition and to a lesser extent our environmental exposures, can wield any bearing on the merit of who we are as human beings, and the content of our character, to the extent that two people of different colours are not permitted to marry. Thankfully, this is a largely extinct thought process that was born out of dire ignorance and acute bigotry, held with almost exclusive membership by departed generations.

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Yet, in what are similar circumstances, those individuals who identify as homosexual are not afforded the same right to civil marriage as their heterosexual counterparts, despite what is an analogous set of preconditions in the above scenario. But how is it analogous, you might ask?

Our current understanding of the aetiology9 of same-sex attraction is founded in our biology. Contemporary, peer-reviewed scientific literature is what society holds to be the best evidence for our explanation of the physical world. When reviewing the body of literature on homosexuality, no single genetic component has been identified as the so-called ‘gay gene’, an observation supported by another observation, that monozygotic twins can be discordant in their sexual preference.10 A finding that would appear to refute a biological origin of homosexuality, when bearing in mind monozygotic twins are genetically identical, nature’s clones. However, with recent developments in ‘epigenetics’11 the literature points to a markedly more complex interaction between genetics and epigenetics with the antenatal milieu of the pregnant mother, which may account for the observed discordance in monozygotic twins.12Organic neurohormonal prenatal and postnatal factors create a biological environment where hormones, cytokines, growth factors and more hormones direct an immensely complex interplay between mother and foetus throughout pregnancy.

Slight variations in exposures, sensitivity or response of neural tissues of the foetus with respect to the hormonal setting of the mother is believed to be a key determinant in sexual orientation.13 14 The problem that arises when proffering a biological argument for the genesis of homosexuality is the tendency for some to interpret these findings as support for ‘pathologising’ the phenomenon of homosexuality or turning it into a deviation from the norm. It is clear that a biological origin for same-sex behaviours from an evolutionary and anthropological vantage point might appear counter-intuitive for the passing of genetic code, when considering homosexual individuals were historically less likely to bear progeny. However, as has already been alluded to, natural selection of homosexuality infers that it must confer an advantageous survival role to explain its continued observation, which is elucidated in the ‘kin selection theory,’15 amongst several other anthropological and evolutionary theories.16 Regardless of an anthropological role for homosexuality in earlier human societies, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) rightly withdrew ‘homosexuality’ from its text in 1973 as a mental disorder, which was supported by all credible psychiatric and psychological associations and bodies worldwide. There are many theories as to the mechanisms of sexual differentiation, including genetic, epigenetic, environmental, maternal anti-foetal immunological responses, male birth order memory, neurohormonal differentiation and so on. With that in mind, when you take even a cursory glance at the relevant literature on the ‘physiology’, so to speak, on the genesis of same-sex attraction and homosexuality it is clear, even though not fully elucidated, that there is no choice in the matter, which supports extensive anecdotal evidence, just as there is no choice in what colour skin one is born with. Thus it follows that if our sexual preferences

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are a predetermined biological aspect of our being, albeit not Mendelian in nature as skin colour is, but rather multi-factorial in origin. On what basis can we as a well-informed society, deny the non-heterosexual community the right to marry without it being an act of discrimination? It is argued in this piece that there is no basis. With the acceptance of discrimination in this discussion, the debate deteriorates rapidly, where individuals must rely on personal views and beliefs that are not informed by evidence, which gives rise to a dangerous set of circumstances when dealing with nation’s social interests.

It is easy to view the word ‘equality’ and all of its corollaries as a platitude, too easily tossed about by political parties, but it is important to keep in mind a true understanding of the word in this context – that is, a state of congruence and equal opportunity under the law for all people regardless of distinguishing features.

The concept of same-sex marriage is a complex issue that raises human rights and constitutional law concerns that are undoubtedly ensnared amongst a multitude of social, political and religious uncertainties. It was not the intention of this paper to be a comprehensive exploration into these issues that surround the debate for and against same-sex civil marriage, but was rather to provoke a reasonable examination of your own views on the topic and why it is you may hold them. However, as a final note, the debate in the end reduces, as it always will, to whether or not you are content with perpetuating a political and social paradigm that allows for secondclass citizens under the law. A democratic nation is founded on the principles of freedom and equality, where each citizen has equal access to legal constructs.

Ultimately, with that in mind, there must come a time when no amount of excuses or political filibustering should stand in the way of what we ought to do as moral beings to attain civil equality under the law.

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endnotes 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

206

‘Marriage Act 1961, Subsection 5(1),’ accessed from http://www.comlaw.gov.au/ Series/C2004A07402.

Philip Ruddock, ‘Second reading speech: Marriage Legislation Amendment Bill 2004,’ in Debates, (House of Representatives, May 27, 2004), 29356.

‘Inquiry into the Marriage Equality Amendment Bill 2012 and the Marriage Amendment Bill 2012,’ accessed from http://www.aph. gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/House_of_ Representatives _Committees?url=spla/ bill%20marriage/report.htm, House of Representatives Committee.

‘Galaxy Poll 2010,’ accessed from http://www.australianmarriageequality.com/Galaxy201010.pdf.

‘Same-sex reforms: Overview of Australian Government’s Same-Sex Law Reforms,’ Attorney-General’s Department, 2011, accessed from http:// www.ag.gov.au/Humanrightsandantidiscrimination/ Pages/SameSexReforms.aspx, Australian Government.

Marry A. Nielsen, Parliament of Australia: Same-sex Marriage, accessed from http:// www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/BN/2011-2012/ SameSexMarriage.

Bruce Bagemihl, Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity, (St. Martin’s Press, 1999).

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

Paula Gerber, quoted in Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee, (Committee Hansard, November 9, 2009), 3.

Aetiology: The study of the cause or origin of.

Frederick L. Whitam, Milton Diamond and James Martin, ‘Homosexual orientation in twins: a report on 61 pairs and three triplet sets,’ Archives of Sexual Behaviour 22, no.

3, (1993): 187-206, accessed from http://www.ncbi.nlm. nih.gov/pubmed/8494487.

Epigenetics is a relatively new field of study that investigates heritable changes in gene expression and phenotype caused by mechanisms other than attributable to the primary DNA sequence.

Methylation or acetylation of DNA segments can switch genes ‘on’ or ‘off’ without altering the underlying sequence of DNA, hence the term epi- (Greek: over, above, on) -genetics. Epigenetic changes are increasingly being identified as playing a key role in health and disease, with recent implications for schizophrenia, diabetes, cancer, autism and Alzheimer’s disease.

Bridget M. Nugent, Jaclyn M. Schwarz and Margaret M. McCarthy, ‘Hormonally mediated epigenetic changes to steroid receptors in the developing brain: implications for sexual differentiation,’ Hormones and Behaviour 59, no.

3, (2011): 338-344, accessed from http://www.ncbi.nlm. nih.gov/pubmed/20800064.

Martin Warren

13.

14.

15.

16.

Bridget M. Nugent, Margaret M McCarthy, ‘Epigenetic underpinnings of developmental sex differences in the brain,’ Neuroendocrinology 93, no. 3, (2011): 150-158, DOI: 10.1159/000325264.

Whitam, Diamond and Martin, ‘Homosexual orientation in twins,’ 187-206.

Nugent, Schwarz and McCarthy, ‘Hormonally mediated epigenetic changes to steroid receptors in the developing brain,’ 338-344.

Kin selection refers to the theory that organisms have evolved to favour genetically related organisms (relatives), which supports the selfishgene theory. Kin Selection is a social evolution theory that refers to alterations in gene frequency across generations as a result of interactions that promote survival between related organisms. Genes encoding advantageous traits increase in frequency under natural selection, whilst those that lower the fitness of its vector through disadvantageous behaviours are seen to decrease in frequency, i.e. are not selected for. According to Kin Selection Theory, homosexuality may confer an indirect survival benefit for biological relatives and thus related genes to an extent that more than compensates for the fitness-loss sustained through such behaviours.

Jim McKnight, Straight Science? Homosexuality, Evolution and Adaptation, (London: Routledge, 1997).

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The Shopping List Bianca Went

The list on the fridge had grown. She needed to buy milk, and cereal, and rice. He had scrawled it in his handwriting as he left for work. It was a Saturday, but he was busy. She stood at the bench and looked down at the list, half his handwriting, half hers.

The tiles were cold under her feet.

She placed her right foot atop her left and balanced. She would be 53 next month, but you wouldn’t know it. She was still tall and thin; three children had done nearly nothing to her figure.

She was slight; her legs were still long and her breasts hadn’t fallen. She put down her empty mug in the sink and walked to the bedroom. She slipped out of her nightgown and stood in her underpants in front of the bathroom mirror. She wasn’t too wrinkly, but it was winter. She was pale. Age spots had started to appear on her arms the previous summer. At first she thought they were freckles, but they never went away, never faded. She was ageing, and she knew it. But she was content. She was never afraid of old age. She was beginning to grow old, with him. And that made it okay.

They had moved to Sydney nine months ago, but returned home to Melbourne frequently. They had kept their house, knowing they would return sooner rather than later to the acre block they had settled their family into. Those white bricks and that big pool and the roses, all the roses,

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she couldn’t say goodbye to them.

And he, he loved the house just as much as she. That house was where they had grown into a family. The two boys would race up and down the pool, and Anna, she would watch her brothers with adoration, too fragile to participate. They had all learnt to drive on that driveway, played games in that living room. He was sure he had heard Peter sneaking girls into his room every so often, but he never said anything. He liked that his youngest son was successful with girls.

John, the eldest, was self-conscious, and spent most of his youth trying, and failing, to grow into his long, thin body. He loved his son, and in his face, he looked exactly like his father.

It bothered him that his son who marked such an uncanny resemblance to him was often so, mediocre. And so, he never said anything when he heard Pete sneaking in girls. He liked that one of his sons was seeing girls in that house, losing his virginity within those walls.

She grabbed the keys from the hook and took the elevator down those 17 floors. The apartment was big, right in the heart of the city. They had been set up there by his work, how they so often were, and it was nice.

The firm always placed them in the nicest buildings, the most expensive neighbourhoods, the biggest homes.

They were never left wanting. He had

Bianca Went

taken the car this morning; he so rarely left her without the vehicle they had decided to take with them in the move. They had asked John to drive the car up one Friday. He had spent the weekend with his parents and flew home on the Sunday evening. It had been nice. Without the car she decided to catch a taxi to the market. She loved it there on a Saturday, when she could walk leisurely through. The men who sold the fruit would always approach her, offer her apples and oranges and ask how her day was. Men still admired her, and she appreciated that. In clothing stores she could still purchase the latest fashions without being embarrassed, feeling old. She knew these days were numbered, so she revelled in it whilst she still could.

She pulled the crumpled list from her pocket. She had forgotten her glasses this morning, where had she put them? So she held the paper far enough from her face to read the scrawled words. Ice cream was somewhere around the middle of the list, and she detested it. She had been diagnosed with diabetes a year ago, and purchasing sweets for her husband still frustrated her. He had been the one who had always bought cake with his coffee, put sugar in his tea, and always ordered dessert in restaurants. It made no sense. Her health had been unkind to her these past few years. A bout with breast cancer five years ago had scared her, but more for the future of her youthful daughter rather than for her own wellbeing. Perhaps this was why old age no longer bothered her, breast cancer had made her happy to be old at all. Slowly her basket began to fill,

become heavy, and she wanted to go home. The June sky had grown grey, and her forgotten-glasses stumble was beginning to take a toll on her eyes.

It was so silly that she even chose to cross the road and go into that store. Perhaps it was her moment in front of the mirror this morning, or perhaps it was the particularly friendly man at the fish market, but she felt young, attractive, and the lingerie store was calling to her, asking for one last hoorah. Three months earlier it had been their 30th wedding anniversary, and they had ventured down to Melbourne to spend it with their family and friends, in their home, their real home. The party was like all the parties they threw, the same friends from years past, all with their now adult children. The black and white tiles that lead out onto the terrace were once more the scene of dancing shoes and broken glass, and at the end of the night, all their children under one roof again, they had sex.

It was nice, familiar, not too long or too short. They had fallen asleep quickly after, but he had not held her.

It wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t out of lack of affection, but rather habit. This is how they slept now. He hadnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t asked for it, she had given it willingly, as she always did.

And it was always the same. She supposed that this is how it was after 30 years of marriage, and he supposed it, too. Neither of them were unhappy.

This was the natural order of things.

That, they were sure of. However, that afternoon beneath the grey Sydney sky, she bought black lingerie. She wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t sure if she bought them for him, for her, or in reaction to the sex

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they had quietly had three months earlier. She placed the pink bag given to her by the shopping assistant â&#x20AC;&#x201C; young, fresh faced, no older than Anna â&#x20AC;&#x201C; between her other shopping bags, hidden from the prying eyes of the public. But she was happy with her purchases, the bags of food for their kitchen and the lingerie for their bedroom.

She had been in the store for around half an hour, and in that time it had started to rain. All the taxis were gone it seemed, and so she walked up four blocks to a coffee shop in the heart of the city, and waited for the rain to subside. She watched the people pass by, men in suits, women in heels, everyone with umbrellas. As the umbrellas began to thin, she paid for her coffee and ventured out for a cab. It was then that she turned to the left and saw it. He was wearing the pants she had ironed the night before, and the sweater his youngest son had bought him for Christmas six months earlier. He wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t holding his briefcase but rather an umbrella.

His left hand gripped it and pushed it against the ground with each stride like a cane. His right hand was linked with that of a woman. She was tall, slender, perhaps around 40. She had a white blazer on and tan pants.

Her brown hair was tied back and her head rested on his shoulder for a moment. He was talking to her with ease as they walked, hand in hand, down the now damp street. She watched them from across the road, bags in one hand, calling for a taxi. At that moment a yellow car pulled up beside her.

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As she walked into the apartment she put the keys on the hook and unloaded the shopping bags. The pink neon bag sat loudly on a wooden dining chair out of sight from the kitchen.

She grabbed it on her way to the bedroom. She took out the black underpants and the lacy bra and put them in her drawer, right at the bottom.

She took the bag down to the garbage chute and threw it down. It was 4:30pm. She had to start cooking. As she tied her apron around her slim middle, she remembered she had put her glasses down on the mantle in the walk-in wardrobe. Once she placed them on her nose and turned to walk out, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. She was an old woman in an apron wearing glasses too big for her thinning face. How much had she aged in the hours since the morning? Suddenly she was 53, her breasts were lower, sagging, and the skin on her face had lost its elastic.

Her thinning hair could no longer be pulled back into a taut ponytail; her legs were no longer smooth.

She walked back into the kitchen and turned on the stove. He was away so often, she was happy he would be home soon.

Bianca Went

â&#x20AC;&#x153; A tradition without intelligence is not worth having.â&#x20AC;?

-T.S. Eliot

Lawrence, Sex and Art’s Ethical Mission Freeing Sex from the Pornographic Imagination J. P. M. Sainty

Ian Hunter suggests Lawrence’s description of pornography as “the attempt to insult sex, to do dirt on it” became “axiomatic” for literary criticism.1 Accordingly, using Lawrence’s Pornography and Obscenity to establish what the ‘pornographic imagination’ constitutes gives us a comprehensive and widely accepted viewpoint.

Lawrence tries to free sex from this pornographic imagination by eliminating its source and locus, the “dirty little secret,”2 created by the simultaneous ‘sex hatred’ and ‘dirt lust’ of the masses. In Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Lawrence attacks the dirty little secret. By writing about his own healthy conception of sex in the ‘right way,’ he presents a model that defies the “dirt done on sex.”3 This defiance is subsequently juxtaposed against the attitude to sex, hatred and lust propagated by the masses that engenders cycles of masturbation, self-enclosure and an ultimate absence of real value in humanity. Focusing on the benefits and divinity of naturalised sex, he attempts to breach the ontological in Lady Chatterley’s Lover, in order to communicate the being of sex; a testament to his greater project of liberating sex from pornography. These strategies both fit within, and comprise, his conception of art’s ethical mission. This is the liberation of healthy sex, and humanity, from the purity lie, through a celebration of the natural body and its interests, in order to create a healthy society.

Lawrence’s artistic exploration of sex, and his attempt to remove its social taboos and pornographic recreations by eradicating it as a ‘dirty’ concept, was futile within Anglo centric circles until the 1960s. Though first published in Italy in 1928, Lady Chatterley’s Lover was not released in its complete, explicit form until the mid sixties, both labeling it as a immeasurably transgressive piece of literature, and defining the society it was released into as ‘out of touch’ with its own mentality and sexuality. This censorship, seen most overtly in the British Obscenity Trial of 1960, prevented Lawrence’s true purpose from being achieved, as Gould stated: “passages are necessarily omitted to which the author undoubtedly attached supreme psychological importance – importance so great that he was willing to face obloquy

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and misunderstanding and censorship because of them.”4 Therefore, with its author being accused of having “a black mind and soul”5 this great and challenging work could not realize its literary aspiration, to “portray [sex] as something sacred, in a real sense as an act of Holy Communion.”6 In Lady Chatterley’s Lover Lawrence attempts to free sex from the dirt of the pornographic imagination through careful construction of the “right kind of sex.”

Lawrence posits that euphemisms only serve to further cloud and mystify sex, keeping it in secrecy and thus associated with the dirt of pornography. As Ian Hunter discusses, serious literature’s borrowing of pornography’s “stylistic resources,”7 such as the presentation of “sexual experiences and sensations in detail”8 as well as “the use of vernacular and obscene language to refer to bodies and acts”9 serves Lawrence’s purpose well. The following passages illustrates this candid, quasi-pornographic mode of description: C--t, that’s what tha’re after. Tell lady Jane tha wants c--t. John Thomas, an’ th’ c--t O’ lady Jane!—’ ‘Oh, don’t tease him,’ said Connie, crawling on her knees on the bed towards him and putting her arms round his white slender loins, and drawing him to her so that her hanging, swinging breasts touched the tip of the stirring, erect phallos, and caught the drop of moisture.10 To leave nothing behind in the dirt, Lawrence is candid about sex in passages.

Connie and Mellors’ characterisation of their own genitals, as John Thomas and Lady Jane, expresses a reverence for the body over and above the ‘individual’ of the character themselves (an ideal consistent through the text). The sexual excitement in the passage, the unrestrained attempt at titillation, is less for arousal in the view of Lawrence, and, as Hunter argues, necessary for the process of de-repression.11 This lets the reader access the same feelings of divinity that Connie and Mellors attain through their bodies and sex which is represented later in the passage when Lawrence describes “the mystery of the phallus”12 and sexual arousal as “the stream of consciousness.”13 Indeed, at one point, Mellors describes his own penis as having “roots in my soul.”14 Lawrence does not let us forget that this sexually explicit content is driving at something more profound than arousal. By evoking sex in this way, Lawrence is trying to represent the divinity and mystery in sex, rather than focusing on the dirty connotations it receives from pornography. This is further facilitated by the way that Lawrence differentiates between the dirt and excrement flows that become unified in pornography.15 The confusion between these flows stifles the creative sex flow. By explicating and distinguishing these flows in Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Lawrence helps to keep sex away from the excrement and thus the dirt of pornography. Mellors tells Connie that “An’ if tha shits an’ if tha pisses, I’m glad. I don’t want a woman as couldna shit nor piss.”16 By explicitly identifying her “secret openings,”17 he removes them from their sexual function; even Connie’s vagina becomes a secret opening, allowing human waste to pass. This is contrasted

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by the infamous anal sex scene in the novel, which, like many of the sex scenes in the text, takes on an emphasis of pleasure and of “shameless sensuality” that “burns out the deepest, oldest shames in her.”18 While Alison Pease19 and Ian Hunter20 critique this scene, the definition of the intercourse (Colonial metaphor and Ancient Greek excuses aside) moves to the extinguishment of shame. It is about the “sheer” sexuality of the act; 21 there is no dirt, no excrement involved despite the bodily functions the anus facilitates. Here, Lawrence is criticised for being pornographic, while arguably he is simply using the example to show that sexuality, while involving organs of waste and of the body, moves beyond their basic function; a notion that pornography likes to dwell on to “humiliate its subjects.”22 Perceptions that Lawrence actually slips into pornography in Lady Chatterley’s Lover obviously damage his ethical mission. However, most of the critiques operate around definitions of porn that lie outside his own. Conveying “the right type of sex”23 in Lawrence’s candid, transparent way is risky business. He does it because his ethical mission requires it; someone needed to break the ground that the purity lie had so entrenched.

Lady Chatterley’s Lover challenges the simultaneous “grey disease of sex-hatred” and “yellow disease of dirt lust” that the “Vox Populi” espouses.24 For Lawrence, these attitudes propagate the purity lie that fosters pornography and subsequent cycles of self-enclosure, deadening the ‘sex flow’. Attacking masturbatory sex in Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Lawrence juxtaposes it with “healthy, natural sex,”25 creating a depiction that frees the latter from connotations of dirt that comprise the pornographic imagination. The brief excitement Connie derives from her masturbatory sex with Michaelis is contrasted with the deep satisfaction and sense of divinity she attains from the sex she has with Mellors. With Michaelis she finds it “impossible to come to her crisis before he had really finished his”26 and, after orgasming, she is berated, as Michaelis has “never had a woman yet who went off just at the same moment as I did.”27 In contrast, Connie’s gradual awakening to “the phallic potency of Mellors” is of an “epiphanal nature.”28 Their third sexual encounter serves as a turning point in Connie’s sexual awakening. Amongst the fir-trees, Connie becomes aware of “new strange things rippling inside of her,” to the point that “she could no longer force her own conclusion with her own activity.”29 She becomes “unconscious in passion” till she is “one perfect concentric fluid of feeling.”30 Afterwards, she states, amazed “We came off together that time.”31 Furthermore, Connie’s sex with Michaelis “collapses her sexual feeling for him, or for any man,”32 whereas with Mellors, her faith in men is restored, to the point where she feels inclined to “give up her hard bright female power.”33 The detriment Connie feels from her unreciprocated sex with Michaelis, compared to the benefit she gleans from her natural, mutual sex with Mellors is allegorical for society. Lawrence nominates that the “mentalisation” of sex, alongside masturbation, results in a dead sex flow.34 Again, by contrasting it with his conception of natural, healthy sex he demonstrates its inadequacies. Clifford is Lawrence’s main instrument in this juxtaposition. His character epitomises the intellectualised, capitalist, anti-romantic attitudes that

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aim to kill off sex. Indeed, after Connie returns from her first experience of mutual orgasm, brimming with passion and revelation, she walks from Wragby to Clifford, reveling in literature. While she opts not to bathe, in order to savour “the sense of his (Mellors) flesh touching her…in a sense holy,” Clifford insists on reading to her. She sits, dazed, pretending to listen and only noticing his “lack of warmth.”

A more illustrative example of Clifford’s lack of ‘true value’ comes when Clifford, after a tense walk, asks Connie “have you ever read Proust?”35 Her response, that he has no feeling, and is all “self-important mentalities” prompts Clifford to further inquire, “would you prefer self-important animalities?”36 Clifford’s preference for the artificial and the intellectual, as opposed to the natural and the emotional is his downfall. For Connie, Clifford lacks sexuality and romance, while Mellors’ sexuality has opened her up to newfound notions of divinity and passion. This contrast demonstrates the repression of sex by the culture of the artificial, as well as emphasizing how this culture represents the antithesis of real truth and value. Culture disfigures sex by veiling it, resulting in masturbation and mentalisation, creating pornography. Lawrence has let sex challenge this cultural context, rather than integrating with it, and has thus liberated it from the pornographic imagination.

This liberation comprises a didactic component of Lawrence’s ethical mission, by dismantling the context that gives sex pornographic connotations.

In Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Lawrence attempts to convey sex ontologically as opposed to epistemologically in order to convey the true nature of sex. He holds sex to be an experience that is transcendent, beyond language and as being, rather than knowing. While Pease explains that this is an essentially problematic approach, the fact that he attempts such a seemingly flawed mission demonstrates his holistic vision to move his conception of sex as far away from the pornographic imagination as possible. He makes the point that “language is necessarily interested, an ideal rather than material system that distorts the truth of being as manifest in the body.”37 Lawrence presupposes this in Lady Chatterley’s Lover in order to criticise the current processes in place (and of course his own discourse is no exception), before moving towards an ontological approach. As Pease argues “Language, like cognition, is bound in the process of knowing, and knowing, in Lady Chatterley’s Lover, is a form of death. Thus all sex scenes work to undo knowing.”38 By trying to debase the language he uses, Lawrence moves towards accessing modes of expression that escape language, cognition and knowing. Lady Chatterley’s Lover attempts to posit sex and the body by the natural, divine terms he thinks they deserve, eliminating the “knowing” that permits pornographic elements. This achieves a knowledge of being, rather than of knowing; an ontological embrace of sexual experience, rather than an epistemological one. His ethical mission is to liberate sex from the ‘purity lie’ and to drive it towards the natural. This would allow one to escape this self-enclosure that is the doom of our civilisation, thereby accessing our true values, which lie beneath culture, through healthy sex in order to realise our true selves.

He tries to establish an aesthetic disinterest – whether he succeeds completely or not is debatable - by positing sex as ultimately transcendent. Lawrence accesses the

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being of sex, rather than the cultural distortions that have occurred; this is the basis of his ethical mission.39 By discussing healthy sex, Lawrence establishes a sexuality that is removed from the dirt of the pornographic imagination. He then attacks the “dirty little secret” that mass culture develops through its sex hatred and lustfulness,40 by showing how masturbation prevents enlightenment and perpetuates self-enclosure, as well as presenting alternatives to this in natural, mutual sex and openness about sex.

This natural sex, this breaking of the cycle, is supported in Lawrence’s attempts to discuss sex ontologically, despite the limitations that literature (an epistemological medium) presents. While his success in doing this is limited, this holistic strategy is consistent with his convictions that art’s ethical mission is to educate.

endnotes 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

Ian Hunter, On Pornography: Literature, Sexuality and Obscenity Law (London: Macmillan, 1993).

D. H. Lawrence, ‘Pornography and Obscenity’ Phoenix; The Posthumous Papers of D.H. Lawrence (London, Heinemann, 1936).

Ibid.

Gerald Gould ‘New Novels,’ The Observer, 28 February 1932, 6.

Reed Smoot, ‘Decency Squabble,’ Time magazine, 31 March 1930.

Rubenstein, in Steve Hare ‘The tumultuous trial of Lady Chatterly’s Lover’ The Telegraph, 1 January 2010.

Hunter, On Pornography: Literature, Sexuality and Obscenity Law. Ibid.

Ibid.

D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterely’s Lover, (New York:

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

21.

22.

23.

24.

Grove Press, 1962) 198.

Hunter, On Pornography: Literature, Sexuality and Obscenity Law. Lawrence, Lady Chatterely’s Lover, 199.

Ibid., 199.

Ibid.

Lawrence, Pornography and Obscenity.

Lawrence, Lady Chatterely’s Lover, 210.

Ibid.

Ibid., 234.

Allison Pease, Modernism, Mass Culture and the Aesthetics of Obscenity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 160.

Hunter, On Pornography: Literature, Sexuality and Obscenity Law. Pease.

Lawrence, ‘Pornography and Obscenity’.

Ibid.

Lawrence Lady Chatterely’s

ORMOND PAPERS XXIX

25.

26.

27.

28.

29.

30.

31.

32.

33.

34.

35.

36.

37.

38.

39.

40.

Lover, 176.

Ibid.

Ibid., 50.

Ibid., 51.

Hunter, On Pornography: Literature, Sexuality and Obscenity Law 113.

Lawrence, Lady Chatterely’s Lover.

Ibid, 126.

Ibid, 127.

Ibid, 51.

Lawrence, Lady Chatterely’s Lover.

Lawrence, ‘Pornography and Obscenity’.

Lawrence, Lady Chatterely’s Lover.

Ibid, 183.

Pease, 145.

Ibid, 146.

Lawrence Lady Chatterely’s Lover 172.

Lawrence, ‘Pornography and Obscenity’.

217

Conrad, Eliot and ‘the courage to be’ Brigid O’Farrell

Facing it, always facing it, that’s the way to get through. Face it.

Joseph Conrad In the modernist tradition, both Joseph Conrad and T.S. Eliot have enlarged our conception of literary activity, moving beyond conventional style and technique with renewed poetic vision. In their respective works, both writers rely on acute and innovative structural mechanisms to lead the reader on an introspective journey of self-exploration to confront the spiritual darkness and moral void that they perceive to lie at the heart of human existence. In both cases, the narrative voice of an interior monologue is used to illustrate that the private concerns and experiences of one individual can act as a microcosm for the broader experiences of all living in circumstances of moral and spiritual decay. In addition, both texts rely upon the convergence of images that engage all senses, and voices that move back and forth in time, to create an ambiguous structural atmosphere of overwhelming darkness and emptiness. Both texts ultimately arrive at the conclusion that spiritual salvation and moral regeneration can only be obtained through self-knowledge – a sincere recognition of the darkness inherent in all humanity and the futility of human existence without, what philosopher Paul Tillich describes as, “the courage to be.”1 In both texts, personal enlightenment and redemption from this spiritual desolation and moral paucity is not presented as a final destination, but rather as the product of an introspective journey into the heart of civilised consciousness.

Prior to presenting the potential for redemption through a voyage of self-discovery, both authors establish a setting characterised by the renouncement of morality and the collapse of spiritual enlightenment. Eliot suggests that it is not just Prufrock but all Western civilisation that is “like a patient etherised upon a table.”2 Similarly, in The Hollow Men, he makes his readers conscious of their own internal darkness by repeatedly suggesting (often through the use of an inclusive personal pronoun) that all of us are in some way “the hollow men… the stuffed men.”3 Conrad’s opening descriptions of the “mournful gloom, brooding motionless over the biggest, and

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the greatest, town of earth,”4 also remind us that despite the supposed superiority of this great imperialist empire, early twentieth-century London is still, in its own way, “one of the darkest places of the earth.”5 In The Waste Land, Eliot also features a grim depiction of post World War One London as an “Unreal city”6 in which people lead a purely mechanical and monotonous existence – “He who was living is now dead.”7 He makes reference to the failure of great Western idealism when he states that “London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down.”8 Exacerbating the despair of both authors is the knowledge that the outer devastation of the city only reflects the inner collapse of the moral fabric of society; even though we seem to be “Glowed into words,” society remains “savagely still.”9 Conrad and Eliot’s view of this futility and horror is almost certainly a reaction to the social disorder and moral breakdown that was symptomatic of life after the First World War and the collapse of the British Empire. Although both texts present their concerns within this context, the truths that each expose are perennial life lessons regarding the nature and very purpose of human action and experience.

Both texts fundamentally challenge society’s capacity for meliorism and offer a concise iconography of the corruption and disorder that has characterised not only the colonisation process but all of modern Western civilisation.

Conrad and Eliot explore the pursuit of spiritual salvation and moral regeneration from corruption and disorder through the use of a dramatic interior monologue that explores the consciousness of a main protagonist. In Heart of Darkness, Marlow’s literal journey into the heart of the jungle to find Kurtz is simultaneously a metaphorical journey into the heart of man. Marlow undertakes this voyage of selfdiscovery which seems to “throw a kind of light on everything about [him].” He comes to truly understand the limitations of self and, in doing so, he is confronted by the “barren darkness”10 that lurks repressed in human nature. Similarly, the use of a dramatic interior monologue in The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock invites Eliot’s readers on a journey into the landscapes of the narrator’s imagination: Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Throughout the poem, we move between thoughts, experiences and actions (or lack thereof) with no sense of time or coherent sequence. By the end of Prufrock, there is little sense that we have made any progress, whether in time or action, since the poem’s opening – an effect that is representative of Prufrock’s moral irresolution, paralysis and abyss itself. Progress in The Waste Land is also non-linear, but instead of moving back and forth in time, the narrative moves in a circular motion, spiralling downwards to eventually reach a place darker than where it started. This sense of a downward spiral is also evident in Heart of Darkness as readers find themselves slowly sinking further into the depths of Africa’s jungle, and simultaneously into the core of human nature, being forced to confront the inner moral and spiritual

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decay that lies at the heart of all ‘civilised’ consciousness.

Just like Prufrock, in Heart of Darkness Marlow’s consciousness guides the tale and the use of a narrative framing device adds depth and duality to the text. In the opening pages, the framing of Marlow’s story through a second narrator is used to foreshadow many of the key ideas of the novella. The description of the individual’s participation in colonialism prefigures Kurtz’s predicament; “imagine the growing regrets, the longing to escape, the powerless disgust, the surrender, the hate.”11 The dual narration also contributes to Conrad’s retrospective method12 by drawing the reader’s attention to the distortions present in the narrative recreation of Marlow’s subjective experience and how the perspective of hindsight transforms the potentially modest story into a deeper moral and philosophical enquiry. Marlow inspires a critical engagement from the reader by posing self-reflexive questions: “Do you see him? Do you see the story? Do you see anything?”13 It is true of both Heart of Darkness and T.S. Eliot’s poetry that the narrative structure is part of the meaning of the text, not just a means of conveying it. In both cases, “the focus of the text is on the dynamics of storytelling” and the work should be read as an “act of narration” rather than simply a narrative in itself.14 Through presenting the experience of individuals, not only do Conrad and Eliot convey the broader experiences of a whole society plagued by moral and spiritual demise, but they also challenge the reader to question their own sense of enlightenment, forcing them into a similar introspective journey of moral and spiritual exploration.

A consistent brooding tone and atmosphere that is generated by the convergence of allusions, questions, images, sights, tastes, smells and voices also characterises both Heart of Darkness and much of Eliot’s poetry. This episodic structure creates an ambiguous, yet overwhelming atmospheric impact that permeates all aspects of each text – imagery, character, plot and style included. In The Waste Land, Eliot creates an effective portrayal of the universal chaotic struggle for salvation and regeneration through presenting a series of insights into personal experiences representative of this chaos. From the “troubled, confused”15 middle-class lady of Part Two, to the drowned body of the Phoenician merchant sailor in Part Four, Eliot relies upon the cumulative effect of these episodes to create a desperate and bleak portrayal of the emptiness of modern cities, the dehumanizing mechanization of modern life and the palling of human emotions. Ultimately, the “heap of broken images”16 becomes terrifying, “not simply because the images are broken, but because there are so many.”17 Similarly, in Heart of Darkness, Conrad’s declaration that “the meaning of an episode was not inside like a kernel but outside, enveloping the tale which brought it out only as a glow brings out a haze,”18 could be used to describe the novel itself. Within Heart of Darkness, it is the ambiguity, expressionism, imagery and atmosphere of Conrad’s writing which illuminates the novella’s main concerns - the indispensability of undertaking an inner quest for spiritual salvation and moral regeneration in a world too often characterised by vacancy and futility. The structure of both texts is defined by the impact of continual shifts in mood, lan-

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guage and style within “an ambiguous realm of consciousnesses.”19 It is the powerful convergence of a multitude of episodes, images, ideas, characters and language that creates the ambiguous structure and mood of moral decay and spiritual deficit.

Initially, this despondent view of human existence seems to provide little hope for spiritual salvation and moral regeneration. Marlow returns to Brussels feeling alienated and frustrated by the complacency and frivolity of people he meets “whose knowledge of life was to [him] an irritating pretence.”20 Eliot presents a similar sense of desperation and dejection as he questions in Geronation, “After such knowledge, what forgiveness?”21 However for both writers, reconciliation lies in the potential for each person to attain self-knowledge – an awareness and understanding of the darkness and hollowness that is innate in all men and its inseparability from the light of idealism. Both authors ultimately declare that having the courage to undertake a painful, disparaging introspective journey of self-exploration is the only answer to the distressing dilemma as to how individuals can achieve moral regeneration and spiritual salvation.

Kurtz’s “supreme moment of complete knowledge”22 – “The horror, the horror!”23 is a “moral victory”24 for Marlow as it shows that he has obtained at least “some knowledge of himself.”25 Kurtz at least could recognise his own misgivings: his declaration “had candour, it had conviction, it had that vibrating note of revolt in its whisper, it had the appalling face of a glimpsed truth.”26 In many ways, the very process of undertaking this quest in itself proves that enlightenment has been achieved, for at least these characters, unlike others, are in fact seeking redemption.

Conrad is more likely to condemn those like the Manager, who is “just the kind of man who would wish to preserve appearances”27 and has “nothing within him.”28 Similarly, in Prufrock Eliot’s repeated inclusion of an abrupt, sharp couplet suggests that the talk of the women will be trivial and pretentious: In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo.29 Such characters, who do not even undertake the quest for self-knowledge, are more guilty of moral and spiritual decay and nihilism. For each text’s protagonists, simply undertaking a process of self-discovery, illustrates an acknowledgement of, and willingness to reconcile their own inner darkness and emptiness. As Eliot himself wrote; “Damnation itself is an immediate form of salvation from the ennui of modern life, because it at last gives some significance to living.”30 Ultimately, the ability of an individual to courageously acknowledge their inherent moral vacuity in a corrupt, modern world demonstrates a sense of candid self-knowledge (which has an intrinsic redeeming quality).

In their respective texts both authors are “occupied with frontiers of consciousness beyond which words fail, though meanings still exist.”31 Eliot himself is well

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known for admitting that: “it’s strange that words are so inadequate.”32 Conrad also frequently makes use of adjectives such as “impenetrable,” “inconceivable,” “inscrutable”33 to create an emphatic insistence on the ineffable nature of his experiences.

It is for this reason that Conrad and Eliot have used structure in such innovative ways. A reliance on distinct narrative voices, fragmented structures and the accumulative effect of imagery allows both writers to add further levels of meaning to their work and communicate human experiences and emotions, so deep and intimate that words often prove insufficient to adequately describe them. Neither Eliot nor Conrad simply condemn all humanity to spiritual and moral failure and privation. On the contrary, both represent enlightenment as the choice to undertake an introspective journey for self-knowledge, where it is the journey itself that enables moral regeneration and spiritual salvation. It is the longevity and significance of this fundamental truth that will guarantee the place of both Heart of Darkness and T.S. Eliot’s poetry in the Western literary canon for generations to come.

endnotes 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

Cahill, A 1967, T. S. Eliot and the human predicament, University of Natal Press, 41.

Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.

Eliot, The Hollow Men. Conrad, J 2007, Heart of Darkness, 2nd edn, Penguin Classics, Great Britain, 3.

Ibid, 5.

Eliot, The Waste Land.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Conrad, 2007, 86.

Conrad, 2006, 7.

Said, E 2007, Joseph Conrad and the Fiction of Autobiog-

13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

21.

22.

23.

raphy, Columbia University Press, USA, 76.

Ibid, 32.

Erdinast-Vulcan, D 1999, The strange short fiction of Joseph Conrad: writing, culture and subjectivity, Oxford University Press, UK, 93.

Eliot, The Waste Land.

Ibid.

Cahill, 1967, 124.

Conrad, 2007, 6.

Rosenthal quoted in: Bloom, 2008, 109.

Conrad, 2007, 88.

Eliot, Geronation.

Conrad, 2007, 86.

Ibid, 86.

24.

25.

26.

27.

28.

29.

30.

31.

32.

33.

Ibid, 88.

Ibid, 88.

Ibid, 88.

Ibid, 26.

Ibid, 26.

Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.

Moody, A 1994, Thomas Stearns Eliot, Cambridge University Press, UK, 29.

Ward, D 1973, T. S. Eliot between two worlds: a reading of T. S. Eliot’s poetry and plays, Routledge, UK, 161 Gardner, H, 1979, The art of T.S. Eliot, 2nd edn, Faber and Faber, London, 6.

Conrad, 2007, 68, 97.

â&#x20AC;&#x153; I think it is no coincidence that great places of learning are beautiful or aspire to be so. â&#x20AC;?

Rufus Black

Communities of Requirement What they are and why they still matter Rufus Black

Originally delivered as a speech for the opening of the Methodist Ladiesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; College School Year I want to declare my hand in this discussion early. I think one of the greatest innovations in Western Culture was the Rule of St Benedict. If I had lived in the Middle Ages I would almost certainly have been a monk in one of these communities - albeit one who probably got into a fair bit of trouble from time to time. The Rule of St Benedict was to create an intentional community, what I will call, a community of requirement.

I have always been interested in and attracted to these sorts of communities, built around values that seem to enlarge our humanity, and am perhaps equivalently suspicious and opposed to ones that seek to narrow our humanity.

Either way they are communities that are unambiguous about their values, beliefs and standards. As a condition of membership they require you to take these values, beliefs and standards seriously, engage with them, and to some extent, to define yourself in relation to them.

These days these communities of requirement arenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t only religious â&#x20AC;&#x201C; which is why there are other options than being a monk. Mind you, I am a Uniting Church minister.

I also worked in one of strongest communities of requirement in the commercial world, McKinsey and Company, where values were taken more seriously than in most places I have seen. They were a central part of the life of the place. Indeed, every year, everyone all over the globe stopped work and spent an entire day in the community engaging with our values.

I have consulted to other communities of requirement like the military and intelligence community and I have found myself feeling at home in them.

I have spent 18 of my 25 years of adult life living in university college communities variously as a student, a tutor, a Chaplain and now as a Head of House. Here the

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requirement has been built on a foundation of academic expectation.

Communities of requirement are not easy places. They demand a lot of you. They make you accountable to standards. You have to wrestle with the question of authority. You are constantly negotiating the boundary between yourself and the community. Yet they make possible a richness of learning and growth that is hard to achieve otherwise.

Communities of requirement are what I would describe as ‘thick’ rather than ‘thin’ communities. They are communities that explicitly, rather than implicitly, stand for a substantive set of beliefs and values. They focus on community as a matter of substance rather than as a matter of process. It is in thick communities that the real power of community lies.

So today in exploring the power of communities I would like to do three things: • Talk a little about the difference between thick and thin communities in education; • Second, sketch the case for the value of education being based on being a thick community; and • Third, explore what creating a thick community might mean in terms of tradition, character and place.

As I do this you are getting a snapshot of a work in progress. While I have thought, written and spoken about aspects of this issue of community before, I had not started to pull it together in this way until Rosa asked me to speak about the power of communities, so I am appreciative of the invitation to do so.

The Difference Between Thick and Thin Communities First, a little about the difference between thick and thin communities in education.

Our education system allows for both thick and thin communities.

For example, at the thick end of communities, consider the importance for the Jewish community of their schools. It is through these schools that history, values and customs are passed from one generation to the next, and relationships are formed that help weave the social fabric of the future.

These schools stand firmly in a particular tradition and confidence that there is truth and falsity, right and wrong, good and bad, beauty and ugliness.

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This type of education is about far more than the curriculum, and encompasses the principles guiding student behaviour and expectations of staff in how to live and role model the values of the community.

There are, of course, limits to thick communities and their schools in a plural society. Schools whose curricular are fundamentally at odds with creating a community that would take its place in a plural society, as extremist madrassas might be, don’t fall within this justification.

We can also have a healthy debate about whether the freedom to teach out of substantive tradition extends to science as well as the humanities. In my view it is vital that we understand how moral traditions relate to science, though there is no justification for modern science being replaced by belief. So, for example, I don’t think it is legitimate to teach so called creation science in place of evolution – though happily this is not a discussion that arises much in Australia.

At the thinner end of the spectrum are schools that make the acquisition of capability the priority. In these places, schools are a microcosm of our wider society where pluralism has come to mean that everyone is free to think, believe, value and do what they want so long as it doesn’t harm others. It is not the task of education to locate people in a particular tradition and to promote a particular way of life beyond that of being a responsible citizen.

In these schools, content is mastered as part of acquiring a capability rather than because of its inherent value. By learning about a particular book or era, we acquire capability to analyse a piece of literature because the book has taught us some truth about the human condition or has a distinctive beauty to it.

The Value of Thick Communities Next, I want to start to sketch out the case for the value of education being based on being a thick community.

The first part of the case for thick communities is that they offer the greatest possibility for the flourishing of individual lives, because ultimately they are invested in the idea that life has meaning and that there is a shape to a good life.

There is plenty of evidence now from multiple fields – especially thanks to the work of positive psychologists like Martin Seligman – that suggests that having a sense of meaning and purpose is important to human well-being. Part of the crises in well-being amongst young people – recall that one in five will experience a period of mental ill-health – is the absence of a deeply grounded sense of the purpose and meaning of life.

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I think it is important to note at this point that a strong sense of life having a meaning or purpose doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t mean subscribing to any belief about God. Think of Buddhism or Taoism, which are atheistic traditions that nevertheless have a very strong sense of the purpose of life, as well as perspectives on what it is to live a good life.

The second part of the case for thick communities is that they are the basis for much more substantive social capital. When connections between people are based not on a social contract, and when we give and get but on a deeply shared set of values and beliefs, the foundation and sense of obligation to cooperate is far deeper.

The third part is that they make a very important contribution to sustaining a plural society. A society, which is truly plural, is one that is able to sustain differences that run deep. They are societies where peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s distinct cultures and traditions can be the basis of community.

It is not realistic to expect families to have the knowledge, skill or perhaps even the time to pass on what is needed for a culture to be transmitted from one generation to the next. Schools have a central role to play.

The fourth is that the thinning out of communities has impoverished our public and civil life, and we are contesting only the distribution of risk and reward or the quality of service we receive, whether from public or private providers. We lament how thin the conversations and debate political life have become. In the last election, we plumbed new lows of hollowness and lack of substance.

There is one important qualification I want to make right away, which is that the quality of thick communities depends a great deal on the way that authority is used.

It is easy to think of the ways in which authority has been abused in defence of thick communities in the past. This happens when those in power see defence of a static tradition as vital to some combination of maintaining their power, the interests of those they represent or the stability of their community. This is the authority of obedience that doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t welcome challenges to beliefs and values.

Ultimately, such strategies are futile, because the traditions with any substance and longevity have within them the seeds of their own critique. That is why they last, and why they can evolve. This means that someone will eventually use them in combination with the right social, political and economic circumstances to unseat the authority of the existing tradition. Perhaps the paradigmatic case of that, in the West, was the Reformation.

It is an observation that is important to make because the use of authority to defend traditional moral positions on topics like divorce and pre-marital sex in previ-

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ous generations and on homosexuality and gay marriages in our time have led to a rejection not just of those positions, but of the traditions they gave rise to.

Similarly, an awareness of the role that ideas in the western tradition played in the subjugation of women and other races, conflict with other religions and other morally abhorrent acts has lead to the rejection of the tradition either in its entirety or in its ability to give any weight to argument. The link between culture, politics and thought with religion has seen the rejection of religion by many in the secular universities, with the insights and interests of these periods compromised by their association with religion.

So, if you look at the curriculum of universities today, a deep introduction of the tradition is unlikely to be found.

When I look at what is taught at Melbourne University, you are unlikely to learn about much before the French revolution. The history, ideas and literature of this period are lost in the darkness. The art of the Renaissance is an exception thanks to the sheer brilliance of its beauty, though few students would have any knowledge of the stories it depicts, the theology it is arguing, or of the earlier art that it is in conversation with.

I want to turn now to talk about the meaning of thick community and to address three areas: tradition, character and place.

Tradition I want to start with tradition. I rather like Alasdair McIntyre’s (on whom I will speak more in a moment) definition of it as “an argument extended through time in which certain fundamental agreements are defined and redefined.” I would add that these are agreements about what is good, true and beautiful.

I want to highlight why tradition matters for two reasons.

First, because a substantive and defensive account of truth depends on it.

The project of the Enlightenment, upon which modern education is premised, and which suggests that an independent rational mind will be able to discover and agree on the truth, has failed. On too many topics, we cannot get rational agreement.

The result of that discovery has been a swing in the other direction – that there is no solid truth and all truth is relative or subjective. In various forms, this has been the Western mainstream for some time. Education that comes out of this tradition will produce ever thinner communities, because ultimately there is no substance

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beyond the self.

There has been another stream of thought, and it is one in which I travel, of philosophical communitarian tradition. The leading lights of this teaching are Alasdair McIntyre, After Virtue; Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self; and Michael Sandel, Liberalism and the limits of self. As a side note I have been much encouraged by Ormond studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; enthusiasm for the work of Sandel. I have a large group of them who independent of any program on campus are engaging with him. If they think there is an academic rock star in the world it would be him.

This tradition argues that truth is dependent on the background knowledge that people bring to their inquiry. The coherence of an ethical obligation to help those least well off is much clearer to those schooled in the literature, religious story and even art, which have given a priority to the poor.

This view is more humble than the Enlightenment project about the ability to find absolute truths but more confident than the post-modern world of relativism.

Second, tradition is an enormous aid to reaching our human potential. This is perhaps clearest in the world of the arts, design and literature. At its simplest, we avoid the need to reinvent so that we can start at a point of greater sophistication.

It provides us with a reservoir of past exploration so that we can see where the fruitful and futile avenues for further development lie.

That reservoir also provides a fulcrum for debate about the way forward stylistically, which is why complex revolutions in style are possible. Revolutions like Impressionism or early Modernism were far richer than those of more recent times, which have attempted the hubristic task of inventing a style out of nothing.

Importantly, in the arts, technique, as well as content, is what is passed on. In an age where craft skill is being lost in so many areas of life, we need a strong defence for its importance.

Tradition is important not only for those creating but also for those enjoying. The depth of your ability to see or hear beauty is dependent on how well educated your eye is. To educate an eye or an ear requires you to engage with the history of tradition.

Implications for education The implication for our educational project is that our curriculum should be designed to make sure that students acquire a deep familiarity with tradition over the course of their educational journey. It returns us to the less than fashionable idea that there is a canon, and that mastering the canon is a core educational task.

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I think that we want a thick community, and to truly tap its power, we need to return to the idea of a canon.

Character Tradition also occupies a very important place in the role of the formation of character in education.

The formation of character is an inescapable educational task. You either do it consciously and deliberately, or you do it implicitly. If ever there was a power in community, it is in its ability to form character.

When we choose to form character consciously, it is very challenging to do so in an educational context, especially one that has prized pluralism.

First, we actually have to decide how we are going to reason ethically. There are multiple incompatible ways going about, and I have highlighted just two: utilitarianism and virtue ethics, which is usually a form of Aristotelianism, though there are also Kantian and Natural Law traditions, and those who think there is no moral truth at all - perhaps more a statement of feeling than argument.

Certainly, part of the educational task is to introduce people to the different traditions and help students to see the incompatibility.

Rarely today do I find that this task is well done. Mostly, children are educated with a jumble of traditions so that their reasoning is logically incoherent if you subject it to too much examination. I can say that with authority, because I teach university students who come from schools across the state and nation.

However, it is not just a matter of thinking clearly about these different traditions, as which one of these traditions you think is right has a very large impact for the rest of the task of forming character.

If you decide it is all about utilitarianism then the task is simply to create people who are very good at thinking through consequences, weighing them up, and doing what is in the interests of the greatest good. They have to be formed to be able to deliberately harm people if required and to live comfortably with not telling the truth if that produces the better outcome.

If that isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t an attractive path, and I certainly donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t think it is, although it is the implicit path in many settings, then the path we face is a very different one. We need to decide what kind of character we want in order to distinguish the individual in our community and the community itself.

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In terms of an alternative we are greatly helped in this task today by the return of virtue ethics to vogue in the last decade or so. This is the type of ethics that is concerned with what kind of people and community we become through the choices we make.

It is very different to the sort of utilitarianism of Peter Singer or that which is used by economists. Utilitarianism asks what is the greatest good for the greatest number. It is the type of theory that justified torturing people in the aftermath of 9/11. It doesn’t consider who we become through these choices.

Who we become matters. For example, I think that the disquiet people experience about the treatment of those arriving on boats in our northern waters is about who we become as a nation through the way we treat them, even if you could argue that there was great good achieved through harsh measures to their arrival.

Post-GFC, I think virtue ethics is the sort of ethics that has a greater urgency to it, because we recognised that the crisis wasn’t just an economic failure, but a failure of character.

If we go down the virtue ethics path, then as a community it requires us to think about what kind of character we actually want.

The clarity of the need to choose what the virtues are and that there are alternative good choices has been apparent from the days of ancient Greece, when the classical world was presented with the choice between the militaristic, but more egalitarian virtues of Sparta versus the virtues of the civil society of Athens.

In the West, notions of what virtues are worth cultivating have shifted around. In the Christian tradition the four Cardinal Virtues were Prudence, Justice, Temperance and Fortitude, which is Plato’s scheme adopted by Saint Ambrose, St Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas.

Aurelius Clemens Prudentius (AD 410) in his epic poem, Contest of the Soul, set out seven virtues which were hugely influential in Europe. They were: Charity, Kindness, Chasity, Temperance, Patience, Diligence and Humility.

We need to decide what virtues we are actually forming. Today’s values statements of organisations can sometimes be the rough equivalent, but rarely have given edge in their interpretation to be anything much more than clichés.

Once we have decided what virtues we are cultivating, it has a very direct impact on educational practices. Indeed, we don’t need to look too far into the past to think of boys schools with harsh practices that the Spartans would have recognised,

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which aimed at cultivating a particular kind of character.

But for those of us who might choose a more Athenian set of virtues we face the question of what we need to do to form those values. Let me give you a very small example. At Ormond, our mission is to form people who will make a disproportionate difference in the world. Service is clearly at the heart of that. So, in orientation week, which in many places is a long string of parties, our students go and do community service on day two. This is one of their first experiences of university life. We then have a high expectation that they will take part in hands on community service projects during their time at the college. It is a simple example, but it is a strong choice.

But it also makes for strong community choices about many other aspects of community life. Part of it is about role modelling. So at Ormond I use my discretionary time to be involved in trying to make an impact in wider society, rather than to do research. I encourage other leaders in our community to do the same.

It matters who in your wider community you choose to celebrate and make the centre of the stories that the community tells. We, for example, profile those who lived lives of service, and Weary Dunlop is someone regularly highlighted to the community as a person whose life is worth admiring and studying.

In a school environment, where you more directly control the curriculum, the cultivation of character also affects the literature you select and the lessons you invite students to draw from it, and the history you teach.

It comes back to choosing what the canon of our community will be. This is an important and substantive conversation. At stake in it are debates about the substantive merits of particular characters and episodes of history.

The important thing about these debates is that they are for the whole community, and not just those involved in the humanities, for the sciences occur within a context of character. Given the pace of technological change, it is more important than ever that we recognise that science is not a morally neutral enterprise. What we choose to study and the practices we use to push the boundaries forward are of huge moral substance. As the power of technology grows, we have to think harder than ever about the choices we are making.

Place Finally, I would like to talk about place. One of things that makes communities substantive is that they address the fullness of our humanity.

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I think that this means that physical place matters. While I see huge value in the virtual world, we need to be careful that too much of our common life does not migrate there, for we risk undermining the power of place. Indeed, the rise of Facebook, Twitter, other social media and online entertainment present risks.

Part of why I see place as so important is because of the centrality that it has had in Christian tradition. Regardless of what you think about the metaphysical and theological claim of the Christian doctrine of the incarnation, it nevertheless ultimately affirms that the deepest encounters occur as embodied moments in particular places. They are about physical presence, and that physicality is a great good to be affirmed.

Places affect our senses from what we see, the temperature we feel, the sounds we hear to the smells we discern. The more completely our senses are stimulated, the more placeful somewhere is. By more â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;placefulâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, I mean more particular and distinct.

Therefore, I want to highlight just three things about place and embodiment that are important for us as a place of education: beauty, hapacity and vulnerability.

Beauty I think it is no coincidence that great places of learning are beautiful or aspire to be so. Though mind you at times this deep connection produces almost comic results.

If you go into the office of a schoolâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s career counsellor you will see an entire wall of university brochures, everyone of them featuring a representative selection of students in front of some beautiful, usually sandstone, building. Schools that have beautiful buildings and grounds make these elements an important feature of them, and make them a core part of how they communicate what education is about.

The reason that this association resonates is that we believe that we are forming people to know the good, the true and the beautiful. The primary place of education needs to reflect those values. It needs to be beautiful and to speak of the values of goodness and truth.

By learning in a beautiful space, we are reminded that beauty, goodness and truth are not abstract ideas, but that they take material form and affect us and the world we live in.

When theses values engage us in our environment, they invite us into a conversation with our surrounds. In doing so they remind us that learning is not a process of solitary internal inquiry, but a constant interaction with the realities around us.

There are times when it will be educationally vital to venture out into places where goodness, truth and beauty are compromised or defaced, but our ability to see that

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impairment is greatly strengthened by having a culture meter bar that we can compare our experiences to. Indeed, there are times in life when we have to confront ugliness, untruthfulness and evil. Yet we do so with greater strength when the solidity of what we are standing for is strong in our memory.

Here we touch on the role of beautiful places not only to teach but to inspire.

I think we need to do all we can to make our learning spaces as placeful and beautiful as we can.

Hapacity The second feature of physical places that I want to explore is their haptic quality; the quality physical things have when they are shaped by time.

At Ormond, where I have the privilege to create a learning environment, we are rich in these spaces. The quality of the 100 year old tables in the dining hall for example. They bear the marks of time, of spooning ins, of the odd knock and the occasional too hot item that was placed on them. The surface of them has the patina of wood that has travelled through time.

The haptic quality of things like the dining hall tables or the weathered stone stands in stark contrast to what we find on websites, which while they might change, never show the signs of time. In the virtual world there is no physical sign of time. The genius of digital is precisely its ability to preserve things unchanged.

Or similarly the manufactured quality of media stars or gadgets, which are always meant to look perfect.

While there can be an appeal and even reassurance in objects that create a sense of the eternal present, they ultimately are a denial of the important human task of learning to live with time, rather than fight against it.

Learning to live with time is a vital part of any education in what it is to be human.

When we live with a sense that everything around us has a history, we are invited to situate our lives in a larger story; to see ourselves as part of and contributors to a wider narrative. We are freed from the existential anxiety that we have to make all the meaning in our lives.

If we attend carefully to the haptic quality of things and recognize that the very reason they are marked by time is because things change, we also avoid the danger of being trapped by history.

The haptic quality of things reminds us that we too must be authors as those who came before us were; it emphasises there is no end to history, no point when we

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have arrived. Rather it is the constant work of each new generation. The growing fragility of things makes us ever more aware of the value of our connection with the past.

Again, what attuned me particularly to the importance of hapacity, were stories in the tradition. The most extraordinary affirmation of hapacity in Western literature is in the mystical vision of Jesus after his crucification - history doesn’t need to be neat or perfect to give us a narrative in which we can belong. Rather, that extraordinary story tells us that our wounds, as much as our strengths, can constitute our identity and our wholeness. What matters is that we recognize and integrate the wounds. We don’t need to regret the messiness in our lives or institutional histories, we need to claim them and affirm them as part of our story.

Vulnerability The final observation I want to make is that together, place and embodiment create true vulnerability. When we are physically present to one another in the same place our capacity to hurt one another is altogether different than when the relationship is distant or virtual. The great opportunity created by vulnerability is trust. Trust, of course, creates risk in the modern world that physical proximity will be abused.

Anyone involved in education knows that this is a risk we have to manage.

What we need to do is to make sure that in anxiety, we manage risks and that we don’t compromise one of things that makes communities important to education.

I hope today in exploring the power of communities I have communicated some sense of: • The difference between thick and thin communities in education; • Advanced a case for the value of education being based on being a thick community; and • Explored a little of what creating a thick community might mean in terms of tradition, character and place.

I make this case with some sense of urgency and I make it here, because I think in a society where community is eroding and our community life is becoming thinner and thinner, schools have a vital role to play.

Perhaps it is in them that we see an echo that takes us back to St Benedict. Just as the monasteries were the ships that carried Western culture through the troubled times of the Middle Ages, I think that educational institutions can be the ships of our time.

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Contributors and Editors William Abbey studies English Literature.

The first time he was lost for words was trying to write this bio. This will be the last occasion this happens in his lifetime.

A. Ghazi Ahamat is completing his Honours degree in Economics, having completed majors in Economics and Pure Mathematics. His particular passion is the Philosophy of Economics, that curious mix of the profound and the pragmatic. He hopes to spend his career asking the right questions.

Taylor Beaumont-Whiteley is a first year undergraduate studying film and television. He has brown hair. He also enjoys life, however, he’s not sure he’s entirely cut out for it.

Laura Berthold is a third year Arts student majoring in History and Political Science. After having spent the last three years writing about the world’s problems, she would love a job in development or international public health to try and solve them.

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Hilary Binks is completing her Honours year in Ancient World Studies. She also works as the Toothfairy, blatantly lying to 3 year olds to promote dental health. In the future she hopes to have a job that is at least half as fun.

Associate Professor Rufus Black is the Master of Ormond College and a Principal Fellow in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Melbourne and a Principal Fellow at the Melbourne Business School. An ethicist, strategic advisor and theologian, he writes and works on ethical, public policy and education issues.

Lucy Broughton is a third year Arts student majoring in Australian Indigenous Studies and Political Science. She is hoping to complete her thesis next year in Indigenous policymaking, to one day appear on Q&A, as some kind of ‘expert’. Failing this, she’ll have to settle for A Current Affair.

Joshua Castle is daydreaming about being a rock star.

Contributors & Editors

Caitlin Clifford is studying first year Arts.

She hopes to major in History and Politics, and her unavailing ambition is to be fluent in German.

Eva Deutscher is probably going to spend the rest of her life studying thanks to her crazy dreams.

All else failing, she can always try to go on X-Factor.

Cameron Dunlop is not an Arts student.

Alexandra Dworjanyn is on the verge of completing her somewhat useless but thoroughly enjoyable Arts (Media and Communications) degree also featuring a politics major. She commences the Melbourne JD in 2013. Her plans for the future? Take over the world, save the planet or simply refuse to ever leave Uni. Still undecided.

Gavrilo Grabovac is in his fourth year, with a double major in Philosophy and English Literature, and a minor in Classics. Next year he will be doing an Honours year in Philosophy.

This will equip him for a life of indolent dandyism in a professional capacity.

John Harris is a Leading Tutor at Ormond College and works at Grattan Institute. He is undertaking a PhD in the School of Culture and Communications, (English). He has been Executive Director of the corporate affairs function in a number of ASX listed companies as well as being Private Secretary to Sir Philip Lynch. He does not aim to do anything anymore.

Sam Hodgson is a first year Science student majoring in engineering. If he ever finishes engineering, he hopes to never have to use it in the real world.

Huw Hutchison is a second year Arts student completing majors in Politics and Philosophy with a Diploma in Indonesian.

He hopes that one day the fame, fortune and glory brought to him by study in these areas might mean he no longer has to spell out his first name to everyone he meets.

Eliza Kluckow is in her first year of science, hoping to major in microbiology and anatomy.

She wrote this as procrastination from memorizing the periodic table. Enough said.

Dr. Sarah Martin was the development manager at Ormond College, where she met and became friends with Davis McCaughey. His death in 2005 inspired her to undertake a PhD and write his biography.

Stephanie McMahon is studing Biomedicine, majoring in Immunology and Microbiology. She hopes to go on to study Medicine, and master as many Romantic languages as is humanly possible.

Nicholas Mills is a second-year Law student, who previously completed a Bachelor of Arts at the Australian National University. After graduation, he hopes to travel the land, entering courtrooms wherever justice must be done, and yelling ‘Objection!

You’re out of order! This whole courtroom’s out of order!’ until the bailiffs have to forcibly remove him.

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William Moisis is.

Associate Professor Neville Norman entered Ormond in 1966, graduated B.Comm(Hons.) and MA at Melbourne; married Margaret at Ormond in 1969 and lived in Wyselaskie until going to Cambridge in 1970, with MA PhD, having academic appointments at both Melbourne and Cambridge since, with 4 children all of whom came to Ormond.

Julian O’Donnell is a first year Arts student who will probably major in English and Spanish.

While he’ll never be able to stitch up Mediterranean economies or cure disease, he’ll tell you all about how much he hates Midnight in Paris and then go on to pronounce ‘Paella’ correctly.

Brigid O’Farrell is a first year Arts student planning to major in politics and spend the rest of her time indecisively floating between Art History or English literature - it’s a tough call. She hopes, one day, her passion for social justice can be turned into a challenging and engaging career that in the course of it (fingers crossed) allows her to travel the world!

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Tycho Orton is a first year Arts student, majoring in Philosophy and Economics. He one day hopes to find a way to improve airplane food, or, failing that, revolutionise concepts in macroeconomics and ethics.

Sophie Parr is studying third year Arts, majoring in International Politics and Sociology.

She will be studying Law next year at Melbourne University to continue her passion in the humanitarian areas of law, and to wear power suits.

Michael Patterson is a Leading Tutor in the Learning and Community team at Ormond College.

He has tutored mathematics at the University of Melbourne for 7 years, as well as at various colleges around the crescent.

Currently he is involved in the development of teaching materials for the Real Analysis with Applications subject in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics.

Michael is also a published composer, and has had works performed by the Melbourne, Queensland, and Adelaide symphony orchestras.

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Dylan Penniket is a first year Arts student, with majors in Philosophy and Politics. Dylan plans to spend his future avoiding responsibility, gainful employment and people telling him to ‘grow up’ by hiding behind books and lecterns for the next sixty years or so.

Simon Pickering is a third year Environments student, completing a major in Geographies, Politics and Cultures. He wants to save humankind from itself, and aims to go into international development policy and planning. He would love a job in the United Nations, foreign policy, or a job at all.

Professor Graham Priest is a Fellow of Ormond College, in residence from 2001 to 2012. He was educated at St John’s College, Cambridge, and the London School of Economics. He is currently Boyce Gibson Professor of Philosophy at the University of Melbourne, and Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the Graduate Center, City University of New York.

Contributors & Editors

J. P. M. Sainty is an Arts Student majoring in English & Theatre Studies and Screen & Cultural Studies. He enjoys his majors, but wishes they had more traditional, less generic names.

Charles A. O. Shenton is a graphical design wizard with a penchant for numbers and a callous disregard for stairs.

Dr. Ross Sundberg QC is an alumnus of Ormond College and sat as a judge of the Federal Court of Australia for 15 years, until 2010.

Samuel Taylor is a photographic wizard who is often found at Dawson street and rarely at the barbers.

Alexa Thompson is studying second year Arts with a major in History. She does not plan to follow her family into the dying field of journalism.

Hugh Utting is a second year Environments student majoring in Urban Design and Planning. He’s a proud member of the Labor Minority in Eastern Sydney.

Austin Van Groningen has recently grown a beard to properly reflect his status as a third year arts student.

In the coming years, he plans to take up smoking and attend many ‘gigs’ .

Professor Emeritus Chris Wallace-Crabbe was founding Director of The Australian Centre. Chris is a distinguished poet and critic. He regularly gives readings, both here and overseas, and has been Visiting Professor of Australian Studies at Harvard.

Recent publications include Imagining Australia: Literature and Culture in the New New World and Next, as well as a series of poems in a number of American, British, Australian and Irish journals.

Martin Warren is originally from Queensland but commenced his post-graduate studies in medicine this year. He has a keen interest in public health.

Bianca Went is an Arts student majoring in Art History and Cinema Studies. She hopes to one day use these majors for something other than mindless social banter and pop culture references, but for now that will have to do.

artworks Cameron Dunlop 90, 91

Alister Sluiter 89

Gavrilo Grabovac 240

Dennis Stammers 88

Amelia Holden 167, 170, 171, 172

Samuel Taylor 87, 92, 127, 130

Arnesh Kapur 88

Ormond College Archives 16, 144

Eloise Kent 8, 128, 129, 168, 169, 207, 212

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Again and again human society has been rescued... by the dissenting voice - Davis McCaughey