The Australian Rhodes Review - Hilary Term 2019

First published in 1934

THE AUSTRALIAN

RHODES REVIEW

HIGHLIGHTS // Current Scholar: Sarah Dobbie National Secretary’s End-of-2018 Report Scholar Reflections: Hugh Stretton – A Quite Exceptional Man

HILARY TERM 2019

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A LETTER FROM THE ARSA PRESIDENT // Happy New Year to all Scholars. Welcome to the fifth issue of The Australian Rhodes Review , which is the largest volume to date.

Inside this first issue for 2019 you’ll find a consistent theme of leadership, but exercised in the diversity of domains that we should expect of Rhodes Scholars. We start with current Scholar Sarah Dobbie’s (Australia-at-large & Linacre 2017) compelling reflection on her purpose, which is complemented by Graeme Davison’s (Victoria & Balliol 1964) profile of one of Australia’s great thought leaders, Hugh Stretton (Victoria & Balliol 1946). An end-of-2018 report from National Secretary Marnie Hughes-Warrington (Tasmania & Merton 1992) updates us on the challenge of selecting the next generation of Rhodes leaders, while an article by John McKenna (Queensland & Magdalen 1984) sheds further historical light on the birth of The Australian Rhodes Review . The Review also contains its usual features: news of various alumni events; personal updates from current and Senior Scholars, including an amusing poem from 98 year-old Malcolm Whyte (Queensland & Balliol 1947); and, sadly, two obituaries of Senior Scholars Peter Pierce and Bruce Kent.

As you know, Scholar support is critical to sustaining our activities and publications, including this newsletter. I’d therefore like to thanks all those Scholars who have already paid their 2019 ARSA membership fees. I would encourage those who have not yet paid, to please do so now. The fees are $80 for ordinary memberships and $40 for discounted memberships (for Scholars elected more than 40 years ago, or within the last 6 years). Of course, we would welcome any additional contribution you may choose to make. ARSA offers two simple payment options.

You can pay online via the online payment platform TryBooking (click here), or by direct credit using the ARSA Membership Renewal Form (click here).

I would also like to highlight two important dates. On Saturday 2 March 2019 ARSA will hold its Annual General Meeting. You’ll find the meeting notice on page 13 of this newsletter. We encourage all Scholars to attend – either in-person in Melbourne, or by linking in via telephone conferencing. If you plan to attend, please advise Gillian Fullilove at gillian.fullilove@rhodeshouse.ox.ac.uk before 15 February.

The second date to flag is Saturday 30 March 2019 when RSA will hold its sixth National Dinner. The Dinner will be held at the State Library Victoria in Melbourne. The new Warden of Rhodes House, Dr Elizabeth Kiss, is flying to Australia to be the keynote speaker. It promises to be a special evening and a wonderful opportunity for Australian Scholars to connect with Elizabeth and discuss her vision - and yours - for the Scholarships.

Invitations were sent out two weeks ago and online registration is open until 28 February. Click here to register.

I would like to close by urging all Scholars – especially younger ones – to get involved with ARSA (our memberbased alumni association which is almost 90 years old!) and RSA (the registered charity which raises funds for the Trust). We need Scholars from all generations to demonstrate leadership by helping our alumni organisations stay vibrant and representative. The time commitments are very minimal – only 1-2 hours per month is enough to make a difference. If you would like to volunteer with either ARSA or RSA, please send an expression of interest to me at tim.orton@nousgroup.com.au Finally, I hope you enjoy reading this latest issue of The Australian Rhodes Review - and that it inspires you to get involved with the Scholar community.

Please contact the Editor, Gillian Fullilove, at gillian.fullilove@rhodeshouse.ox.ac.uk to submit an article, news or make a suggestion. We are always delighted to hear from Scholars.

Best wishes, Tim Orton (Australia-at-Large & Magdalen 1986), ARSA President Front cover image: McCall MacBain Dinner, Melbourne, 23 May 2018

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CURRENT SCHOLAR IN OXFORD // SARAH DOBBIE (AUSTRALIA-AT-LARGE & LINACRE 2017) WHO ARE YOU HERE FOR? peaches, and thinking that they’re perhaps the greatest gift of all. Let me explain.

Last year, I had just left Australia and was sitting on the Tran-Siberian with six other new Antipodean Scholars en route to Oxford. A year later, I am working as a legal advocate in Moria – widely considered “the world’s worst refugee camp” – assisting asylum-seekers in the preparation of their claims. Often I’m far more valuable as a decent human being than I am as a qualified lawyer – more than someone to tell them what to do, people so often just need someone with whom they can share their story.

In my lifetime, I have received exceptional gifts – of a family, a home, a safe country, an education, this Rhodes Scholarship, opportunities, and relationships. Combined, I have received the remarkable gift of a future – a place in the world to grow, to learn, and to dream. But as I look at the bag of peaches, I see all of these gifts bound into one.

I wrote the following reflection in Lesvos, a Greek island 5.5 kilometres off the Turkish coast, and home to over 10 000 stranded asylum-seekers.

While now back in Oxford, I wanted to share my original thoughts, the thoughts of a first-year Scholar wondering what it all means, and who I’m even here for.

On my desk, there is a bag of peaches. I sat down to write and to think about Oxford, the Rhodes Scholarship, the past year, and all of the gifts that I’ve received. I am now sitting here looking at the

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Today, I was finalising a client’s narrative statement, which tells the story of flight and the danger being fled. My client – a young man from the West African nation of Togo, and a survivor of the most hideous torture – was too injured and ill to make the bus trip to our office. He lives in the Olive Grove, the unofficial extension of the camp (now at almost four times its capacity). I met him out the front of his “tent”, a storage shed lined back-to-back with 120 bunks, just enough room to wriggle out from between the beds and legs. To many, he has nothing – no family, no possessions, no home; little health and limited future; barely any hope. What that bystander would miss though is his humanity – he has a story, one that is far from over.

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As we finished our session – the last before his asylum interview – he shuffled across the road, to the sole fruit vendor, and insisted on so carefully selecting for me each piece for a full bag of peaches. In a world in which he receives 90 Euros per month, and one meal per day, his instinct was still to give – there was genuine joy in his gifting of the peaches to me, a gift of thanks for what I had attempted to give him.

All of the gifts that I have received – not least the continuing gift of this Rhodes Scholarship – led to that bag of peaches, to a position in which I can actually serve, where I can show someone else that they are not alone, where the support I have received gives me the strength to stand for others, and where my education and voice actually matter in someone’s life.

The time I spent on Lesvos was a continuation of my first year of Oxford studies, during which time I was fortunate enough to read the MSc in Refugee and Forced Migration Studies. The dream of studying at the Refugee Studies Centre (RSC) is what drew me to apply for the Rhodes Scholarship in the first place.

Not always (or often) easy, my first year really made me confront myself – more than why are you here, I found myself asking who are you here for? I spent a great deal of time walking around in everyone else’s lives, wondering why I had or hadn’t done certain things, and what I should or shouldn’t do. Typical responses to my degree choice – ranging from “Is that even a real course?” to “That’s so niche!” – didn’t make it much easier. For a time, I very nearly lost touch of the “who” I was here for, and of myself.

Finding my way back has been an enormous part of my Rhodes experience.

I arrived at the RSC initially determined to move beyond the legal world. As someone who hadn’t particularly ‘loved’ the law during undergraduate studies, I had wondered for a while whether it was really for me. While the MSc broadened my thoughts across disciplines – from politics and anthropology to ethics and economics – it ultimately showed me the

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way back. I have no newfound love of the law, but rather a renewed appreciation of its power, and of the corresponding influence of those who can utilise it from within. Within the most multidisciplinary of degrees, my thesis thus sat right back in the law. Entitled Seeking Access, Seeking Justice, it examined the use of class actions by asylum-seekers in Australia, and the extent to which this newly-utilised litigation device is capable for realising “access to justice’. Once again, it was about the “who”, written in dedication to the 1,923 asylum-seekers involved in the Kamasaee class action, the largest human rights-related settlement in Australian legal history, and a monumental defeat for access to justice. As testament to the extraordinary support that I received, both in and beyond Oxford, it ultimately received the Prize for Best Thesis.

Now almost a term into my second year, I have fully returned to the law, currently reading for the Bachelor of Civil Law. Reinspired by my first year, I feel that I’m studying with a real purpose – as Lesvos reminded me, sometimes “fighting the world’s fight” can often be best embodied in fighting for individuals, in the silent spaces many have forgotten, with few to witness the fight.

During my last week on Lesvos, I was mortified when a new Australian on our team told our asylum-seeker interpreters, and half my clients, that, “You know she goes to Oxford, on a scholarship?” Very quickly, the photographs and articles were pulled up on cracked phone screens, and the interpreters had a good laugh about the total lack of resemblance between the Sarah of December 2016 – blazerwearing, grin-beaming, just-announced Rhodes Scholar – and the Sarah standing before them – cotton slacks, slouched outside a tent, sweatglazed from the Greek sun. I was more shocked by the response from my clients – “What on earth are you doing here then, helping us?” If only I could have fully explained that they are the reason I am here in the first place, my answer to the “who” in the “Who is this all for?”

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THE NATIONAL SECRETARY’S 2018 END-OF-YEAR REPORT// TRICKY QUESTIONS Is it good that house prices are falling? How did you deal with a subject at university that you found boring? Who is an unsung hero in your field? What was the first experience in your life when you realised you had the power to do something meaningful? Is kindliness a lost cause in a social media age? What was the last difficult conversation you had?

Politics. Personal insight. Ethical dilemmas. The criteria. Choice of program. What if you met Cecil Rhodes? Rhodes interview questions are famous, even legendary. Forty minutes can fly by in the back and forth and curling trajectories of follow up questions. And those minutes stick in the mind and take on a rich quality over time.

failed cufflinks, knocked over glasses, birds that make their way into the interview room, and the utter horror of having a blank mind. Thirty to forty minutes can seem short, or endless, with some details coming into sharp focus over and over again, and other elements lost to memory and time almost immediately.

I have been privileged to watch interviews all over Australia for five years. The questions are tricky— sometimes stopping all of the applicants in their tracks—and the pace is gruelling. Moreover, I have seen time and again how tough questions can be asked without a tough demeanour. This is a great display of leadership, reflecting both a desire to go below the surface of ideas and to also recognise the potential of everyone we see.

Questions are proposed ahead of panels meeting, and fine-tuned to reflect the particularities of individual applications, the feedback of Rhodes House and the National team, and to avoid questions asked recently. These questions are then collated and sent to the Australia at Large secretariat to ensure that the Canberra panel does not advantage any particular constituency through a particular line of questioning.

All of this process is managed by the wonderful Rhodes Australia team, and in particular our state administrators: Deirdre de Souza (WA), Rosie Wilkes (SA), Joan Vosen (Victoria), Lee-Anne Phillips (TAS), Lyndell Wilson and Megan Ward (Territories and Australia at Large), Simone Lehmann (NSW) and Sonya Betros (QLD). We all owe a deep vote of thanks for their hard work in helping the questions to flow across Australia every year.

Everyone has a Rhodes interview story, and rightly so. They are memorable moments. Applicants, panels and Senior Scholars have told me tales of

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We have the question set from the last five years, but our older questions are with you, our Rhodes community. As tricky questions are the threshold of joining our community, they are precious to you

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and to us, and we would love to hear from you about your interview memories and the tricky questions you navigated. Please do get in touch and

Australia at Large NSW QLD SA TAS VIC WA

share them as a part of the welcome to our 2019 scholars, whom I am delighted to introduce:

Daniel D’Hotman (Monash University, LSE) Isobel Phoebe Montgomery (University of Adelaide) Michael Rees (University of Sydney) Brian O’Callahan (University of Sydney) Jordan English (University of Queensland, Oxford University) Gia-Yen Luong (Deakin University, University of New South Wales) Brooke Dambacher (University of Tasmania) Siobhan Tobin (Australian National University) Calum Braham (University of Western Australia)

Victoria’s 2018 Selection Panel and Finalists

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RHODES HOUSE NEWS //

RHODES SCHOLARS FUND & DONOR RECORDS The 2017-2018 Rhodes Scholars Fund was a success. Australian participation rates are normalising as Scholars recognise the benefits of regular giving. Our cumulative participation rate is now an impressive 54%.

Americans in the Class of 1967 (above) set a new donor record for their 50 anniversary celebration - 93% of Scholars made a gift in 2017-2018, reaching a cumulative total of 100% participation. th

HISTORIC CLASS OF 2019: 101 SCHOLARS Last month the Rhodes Trust announced a record-breaking class of 101 new Rhodes Scholars. This cohort, who will arrive at Rhodes House in October, features young people from all fields of study. The Class of 2019 will be the largest and most geographically diverse in the Trust’s 116-year history. Scholars were selected from two new Rhodes constituencies, East Africa (Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, South Sudan and Burundi) and Saudi Arabia, as well as from a reinstated Singapore constituency. For the first time, the Trust also offered two Global Rhodes Scholarships to candidates from anywhere in the world not otherwise eligible to apply. This marks a significant step in the Trust’s efforts to make the Rhodes a truly global Scholarship. The two inaugural Global Scholars – who competed against a pool of applicants from 32 different countries - are Olga Romanova from Russia and Adam Abebe from Ethiopia.

The youngest Scholars led the way in Annual Giving last year. 82 Scholars who went down in 2018 made a gift in support of the Scholarships as part of the Going Down Campaign.

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FROM THE ARCHIVES // JOHN MCKENNA (QUEENSLAND & MAGDALEN 1984) LOOKS BACK AT THE EARLY YEARS OF THE AUSTRALIAN RHODES REVIEW As John McKenna (Queensland & Magdalen 1984) explained in a previous issue of this newsletter, in February 1931, some 27 years after the first Rhodes Scholars were selected, an inaugural conference of Australian Scholars was convened in Melbourne.

The conference resolved to establish an association of Rhodes Scholars in Australia. It also resolved to publish a journal, for circulation amongst the wider Australian community, with articles written by its members.

ARSA republished (in digital form) the first volume of The Australian Rhodes Review (1934) last year. As promised, the second issue (1936) can now be accessed here. The remaining few volumes will be published in subsequent issues.

==================================================== CONGRATULATIONS // Congratulations to Mike Fitzpatrick (Western Australia & St John’s 1976) for being appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia in the 2019 Australia Day Honours. Mike received his AO for distinguished service to Australian Rules football (including a 10-year stint as Chairman of the AFL Commission), in business and as a Board member of the Walter & Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research. Mike was of course recently appointed a Rhodes Trustee.

If Scholars know of others who received honours on Australia Day, please advise us as we would like to recognise their achievement in the next newsletter. And if any Scholar is interested in assisting ARSA identify potential recipients of such honours, please email Gillian at gillian.fullilove@rhodeshouse.ox.ac.uk

Congratulations also go to barrister Andrew Bell (New South Wales & Magdalen 1990) who will be elevated to the bench of the Supreme Court and will replace Governor-designate Justice Margaret Beazley AO QC as the President of the NSW Court of Appeal.

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SCHOLAR REFLECTIONS: ‘A QUITE EXCEPTIONAL MAN’: HUGH STRETTON IN OXFORD // GRAEME DAVISON (VICTORIA & BALLIOL 1964) REMEMBERS HUGH STRETTON (VICTORIA & BALLIOL 1946), ONE OF AUSTRALIA’S LEADING PUBLIC INTELLECTUALS In his time, Hugh Stretton (Victoria & Balliol 1946) was regarded as Australia’s foremost public intellectual and a social democratic thinker of international stature. His prolific writing on history and the social sciences, cities, housing, and economics won admirers on both sides of politics.

His best-known book Ideas for Australian Cities (1970) became the manifesto for a generation awakening to the opportunities and challenges of Australia’s cities.

I first met Hugh in February 1970, not long before the book appeared. I continued to read his work and to meet him occasionally over the following decades.

We had followed similar paths, from Max Crawford’s Melbourne History Department via a Victorian Rhodes Scholarship to Balliol College where, twenty years later, my PPE tutors included some of Hugh’s friends and former colleagues. When we first met it was as student and examiner in viva voce examination of my ANU PhD thesis, my first foray into Australian urban history. After Hugh’s death in 2015 I was invited to edit an anthology of his writings, Hugh Stretton: Selected Writings (LaTrobe University Press/ Black Inc), a project that led me to revisit his early life, including his time as a Rhodes Scholar in Oxford.

In 1945 Stretton was a 21-year-old seaman serving on a corvette in the Timor Sea when a faded advertisement on the ship’s notice board caught his eye. The war was drawing to an end and applications were again being called for the Victorian Rhodes Scholarship. ‘All shortlisted candidates will be immediately returned to their home port’, the notice declared. To the homesick young seaman, the promise of an early homecoming was almost as alluring as the distant vision of Oxford’s dreaming towers.

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Applying for the Rhodes may have seemed a long shot for Stretton had completed only one year of his Arts-Law degree. His results were so brilliant, however, that he had actually been barred from military service. (A manpower regulation, inspired by memories of the terrible destruction of the nation’s best and brightest in the Great War, forbade the top five percent of students from enlisting). With the support of his father, Judge Leonard Stretton, Hugh challenged the regulation and enlisted as a rating in the Royal Australian Navy. ‘This got me three years’ card-carrying membership of our working class for which I’m grateful ever since’, he remarked.

Hugh Stretton’s ‘going up’ portrait in 1946.

(Photo courtesy of Rhodes House).

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After a four-year suspension, the field of applicants for the 1946 Rhodes was predictably strong. Stretton attended his interview in civvies, while other candidates, all graduates and officers, wore their service uniforms and decorations. To his surprise, however, he was the candidate called back to receive the congratulations of the committee. His referees may have been less surprised. ‘The word “genius” was one to be chary of’, his ancient history lecturer Jessie Webb, observed, ‘but it was the word my mind associated with the name of Hugh Stretton’. ‘A young man of quite exceptional promise’, Professor Max Crawford agreed. Opposition Leader Robert Menzies, a family friend, had added a weighty testimonial.

Stretton’s Rhodes application, which I include in my anthology, is a remarkable prospectus of ideas and convictions he would pursue in later life. From his father, author of a landmark inquiry into the causes of the 1939 ‘Black Friday’ bushfires, and from his history teachers at Melbourne, he had acquired a mature understanding of the value of history for public policy. ‘I learn what I can of the history of ancient and modern civilisations so that I may better understand the tasks that lie ahead of my generation in the troubled and perilous future’, he declared.

He arrived in England in September 1946. The nation’s ‘troubled and perilous’ past was still visible in the bomb-scarred landscape of its capital. Yet the war, he discovered, had broken down old class enmities and ushered in a ‘peaceful democratic revolution’.

Clement Attlee’s Labour Party was erecting the pillars of a modern welfare state. Under Master A.D. Lindsay, Balliol’s senior common room was the most radical in Oxford. Marxist historians Christopher Hill and E. H. Carr and Bevanite economist Tommy Balogh were among its luminaries. While resistant to doctrinaire Marxism (‘the idea of having a theory of everything is death’), Stretton embraced the

belief, then widely shared by Left and Right, in state intervention to redress social inequality. Despite the rising tide of neo-liberalism in the 1980s and 90s, Stretton held to it throughout his life.

Stretton took his final examinations in Modern History after two years, instead of the usual three. In Oxford as in Melbourne, he dazzled his teachers. ‘He is regarded and has shown himself to be a quite exceptional man in his branch of study’, Rhodes House Warden Carlton Allen noted in 1948. He won the Gibbs Scholarship (Oxford’s premier prize for history) in 1947. The following year Balliol ‘paid him the extraordinary compliment’ of electing him to a Fellowship–even before he had taken his final examinations. His parents were astonished. ‘I shall never know how he happened to us’, his mother confided to Max Crawford.

He would spend another five years in Oxford, becoming an admired tutorial fellow and college dean. But the personal antipathies and factional rivalries of Oxford historians repelled him. ‘If Melbourne historians are self-destructive, Oxford historians are mutually destructive’, he observed.

They seemed indifferent to the deeper questions that most interested him – how to explain events in the past, how values influenced explanations, and how history could contribute to public policy.

Stretton as Professor of History at the University of Adelaide, 1954

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In 1953, Vice-Chancellor of Adelaide University A. P. Rowe visited Oxford in search of a new Professor of History. Adelaide had a long tradition of offering its chairs to infant prodigies. Future Nobel prizewinner Laurence Bragg was only 23 when he became its Professor of Physics and Keith Hancock just 25 when he took up its Chair of History. Newly appointed Warden of Rhodes House, E.T. (Bill) Williams, another historian, pointed Rowe towards Stretton. Offering the chair to a 29-year old with no doctorate or publications, and without a formal interview, would now be considered rash, if not corrupt. But in those days an Oxford starred First easily trumped a doctorate and a professor’s reputation, at least in Australia, still depended more on his (it always was his) teaching and public role than his research. So, after a brief exchange of telegrams the matter was settled. ‘I came home very happily’, Stretton recalled. He could be a more ‘effective working citizen’ in Australia than in England, he believed, as much as he loved that country too.

Over the next fifteen years in Adelaide, he built a lively democratic department and taught some distinguished future historians. His colleagues were in awe of his speed and clarity of thought and speech, his extraordinary breadth of knowledge, both theoretical and practical, and a moral authority that seemed to compel almost universal admiration, if not agreement. Yet, a decade after his appointment, he

had published almost nothing. Only in 1969, after almost twenty years of reading, discussion and reflection, did he publish his magnum opus, The Political Sciences, an extended attack on the notion of value-free social science. It was immediately hailed by the Times Literary Supplement as ‘a work of near genius’. Soon afterwards he resigned his Chair to become plain Mr. Hugh Stretton, Reader in History.

Free at last from the role of ‘God-Professor, he entered the most fruitful period of his life. A steady stream of original and influential books– Ideas for Australian Cities (1970), Housing and Government (1974), Urban Planning in Rich and Poor Countries (1976) and Political Essays (1985) –flowed from his pen.

Why had it taken Stretton so long to fulfil his early intellectual promise? ‘Indolence and incapacity’, he joked to one interviewer. Nobody writes anything much worth reading before the age of forty, he pleaded on another occasion. The truth was probably more complex. In later life, he regretted not undertaking the orthodox academic apprenticeship of the PhD. As a boy professor, he had also sacrificed the opportunity to develop his personal research for the responsibilities of academic leadership. But perhaps his inhibitions were psychological as well.

His prodigious early success, built upon his quickness of mind in the artificial setting of the tutorial and the examination, may have created expectations that were hard to fulfil. Effortless superiority, even for those as prodigiously gifted as Hugh Stretton, was never quite as effortless as it seemed.

This article was written by Graeme Davison (Victoria & Balliol 1964). He is Emeritus Sir John Monash Distinguished Professor of History at Monash University. His books include ‘The Rise and Fall of Marvellous Melbourne’ (1978) and ‘City Dreamers: The Urban Imagination in Australia’ (2016).

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ALUMNI EVENTS 2018 AND 2019 // 17 DECEMBER 2018: END-OFYEAR DRINKS, MELBOURNE

Scholar appreciation and gratitude was also conveyed to Joan Vosen for her twelve year contribution as Selection Administrator. Scholars also met Daniel D’Hotman, a medical graduate from Monash University and recipient of a 2019 Australia-at-Large Scholarship.

Ann Nicholson (Victoria & St John’s 1988), recently appointed as Honorary Secretary for Victorian Selection, spoke about her new role and how those present could support the selection process.

9-10 FEBRUARY 2019: RHODES HEALTHCARE FORUM, OXFORD Anita George, Graham Craig, Joan Vosen and Matt Pierri

Laura Hilly and Anthea Lindquist

Twenty-five Senior Scholars and guests gathered for the Rhodes Victoria end-of-year drinks function.

The evening enabled Scholars to say farewell to Carolyn Evans (Victoria & Exeter 1995) and Joan Vosen. Evelyn Chan (Victoria & Hertford 2011) , Deputy Chair for Victorian Selection, expressed heartfelt thanks to Carolyn for 5 years’ service as Honorary Secretary of the Selection Panel.

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On 9-10 February Rhodes House will host its fourth Healthcare Forum. The theme will be “From Surviving to Thriving” . The Forum’s organizers acknowledge that the world rightly celebrates our remarkable progress to reduce death and disease worldwide. But the focus must now shift to goals beyond just reducing mortality, to create a future where everyone can enjoy thriving health. The Forum will explore how wellbeing and the prevention of diseases can reduce inequality. The event will host discussions with experts about opportunities and approaches in technology, epidemiology, public health, drug discovery, biomedicine and policy to promote global thriving health. All of the main talks will be livestreamed here: https://www.youtube.com/user/RhodesTrust/live and you can join the conversation on Twitter using #RhodesHealth19

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2 MARCH 2019: ARSA ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING The 26th Annual General Meeting of The Association of Rhodes Scholars in Australia Incorporated will be held on Saturday 2 March 2019 from 2:00 – 3:30pm. It will be held at Nous Group, Level 19, 157 Collins Street, Melbourne and via video conferencing facilities. If you would like to attend, please RSVP by emailing Gillian Fullilove.

The agenda for the meeting is as follows: 1. Election of Chair 2. Attendance and Apologies 3. Confirmation of the Minutes of the previous AGM. 4. Business arising 5. Reports (a) Australian Secretary of the Rhodes Trust (b) RSA State Reports (c) Hon President’s Report. (d) Hon Treasurer’s Report, including (i) Statement of the Association’s Accounts for 2018 (ii) Auditor’s report 6. Proposed special resolution to amend paragraph 8[1] of the constitution to increase the maximum membership of the Executive from five to eight.

7. Election of the New Executive 8. Subscription Rates 9. Venue for the next AGM 10. Other Business The object of proposed amendment to the constitution is to increase the permissible size of the Executive, from five members to eight, to facilitate greater representation from our membership in different States or Territories. The formal terms of the resolution proposed is “that subparagraph 8[1] of the constitution of ARSA be amended by deleting the word “five” and inserting the word “eight”.”

Saturday 30 March to assist with the 2019 Orientation. The half-day orientation session will be held in Melbourne this year, in a CBD location still to be confirmed. The orientation programme is designed to help Scholars-Elect learn more about what lies ahead when they start their Oxford adventures in October. It is also designed to allow new Scholars to get to know each other, to ask questions of older Scholars, and to think about what the Scholarship might mean for them in the short, medium and long term.

These orientation sessions have only been running for a couple of years. The feedback indicates that they have proven immensely valuable to our youngest Scholars - and equally rewarding and enjoyable for the older Scholars who help out.

If you are interested in participating in the 2019 Orientation, please contact the National Secretary, Marnie Hughes-Warrington on marnie.hugheswarrington@anu.edu.au by 14 February.

SAVE THE DATE: 30 MARCH 2019 The sixth Rhodes Scholarships in Australia National Dinner will be held at the Isabella Fraser Room, State Library Victoria, Melbourne on Saturday 30 March 2019.

The keynote speaker will be the new Warden of Rhodes House, Dr Elizabeth Kiss (Virginia & Balliol 1983).

Please click here for the full Notice of the ARSA AGM and the Notice of Intention to Propose a Special Resolution.

A CALL FOR VOLUNTEERS, ORIENTATION 2019 Marnie Hughes-Warrington, our National Secretary, is calling for a recently-returned Scholar (any Scholar who came down in the last 5 years) and three older Scholars to volunteer a few hours of their time on

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Registration is now open now and closes on 28 February. Click here to purchase your tickets.

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ALUMNI NOTES // OBITUARIES Vale Peter Pierce (1950 - 2018)

Vale Peter Pierce: a gentleman and a scholar in all things

BY STEPHEN ROMEI This is the hardest column I have had to write. Peter Pierce, a regular reviewer here and, far more important, a friend, died suddenly on September 4.

He was at his flat in Melbourne, which he shared with Rae, his wife of almost 40 years, and he went downstairs to take out the garbage. He didn’t return.

He was found in the stairwell. He was 68.

Rae and Catherine, their only child, who is a barrister, are bereft. So am I. When someone dies we have the understandable habit of saying we can’t imagine how much pain the family is in. But we can, can’t we? I have been asking myself if Peter’s death has hurt me more than that of my friend Iain Shedden, this newspaper’s music writer, almost a year ago now, or that of my younger and only brother, who should have turned 50 this week.

Peter Pierce (Tasmania & Balliol 1973) was an academic, editor, author and book reviewer. He died suddenly last September.

The following piece is a reprint of a touching obituary which appeared in The Australian on 15 September 2018. It was written by his friend Stephen Romei, the Literary Editor of The Australian . The Australian Rhodes Review is grateful to Stephen for his permission to include his article in its pages.

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The answer is yes, but the reason is not because one or the other was dearer to me. My brother’s death, and the suffering that came before it, is something I am not near coming to terms with. It’s the cumulative nature of the grief, the aggregation of sorrows, that weighs so heavily. And I know there’s nothing special about this. It’s ordinary. It’s what we all go through, sooner or later.

I knew Peter for a decade. He began writing for me when I was editing The Australian Literary Review.

One of his first pieces was a marvellous, insightful essay on Tom Keneally, who he summed up as “Australia’s Balzac”. He wrote a book on Keneally’s fiction, Australian Melodramas, in 1995. Today I am running Peter’s final review, on page 22. It’s wise and elegant, and it hurt to read it.

Peter was born in Tasmania. He graduated with honours from the University of Tasmania and in 1973 received a Rhodes Scholarship that led to a MLitt (Master of Letters) from Oxford. He was Professor of Australian Literature at James Cook University for a decade until his retirement in 2006.

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His books include The Oxford Literary Guide to Australia and The Cambridge History of Australian Literature.

The one I cherish is From Go to Whoa: A Compendium of the Australian Turf (1994). Peter shared my passion for horse racing. We talked about updating the book together. That will not happen now. Nor will our plan to go to the Melbourne races this spring. The Saturday after Peter’s death was the first one in years that didn’t include our back-andforth emails over that day’s racing. I missed it sorely.

Peter was someone who made me check my English, spoken and written. He never corrected anything I said or wrote, but I knew he knew where words belonged and didn’t belong, whether it should be “me” or “I”, for example, and that made me treat sentences with respect when in his company.

Catherine told me she sometimes urged her father to promote himself a bit more. But, as I said to her, his modesty was one of his hallmarks, along with his good manners. He was a gentleman and a scholar, in the beautiful old-fashioned sense of the phrase.

Catherine also told me her parents were still in love.

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I saw Peter the week before he died. I am grateful I had that time with him, but also saddened by the fact that’s all it was, a few drinks and a chat, and all it ever will be now.

The last word goes to Peter, from our email exchange rating the horses in the Memsie Stakes at Caulfield on September 1.

“Not the Scott Morrison tip. Ageism.”

Peter refused to back horses aged eight or over. I’m not sure if he was referring to Happy Clapper or Black Heart Bart, but either way he was right: neither troubled the judge.

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Vale Bruce Kent (1932 - 2018) The first, and abiding, impression that anyone meeting Bruce for the first time might readily form concerned his sense of humour and the question of whether he was, or was not, intending to be taken absolutely seriously. This characteristic remained throughout his life extending into the months during which he remained as an inpatient following a femoral fracture. Perhaps the nursing staff were initially a little perplexed but it wasn’t too long before they were enjoying his company.

Bruce was the Victorian Scholar in 1955 and was one of five successive Victorians opting for Magdalen. After completing PPE, he embarked on a BPhil. His subject in that study, namely the aftermath in politics, economics and diplomacy of reparations after the First World War, remained central to his interests throughout his academic career culminating in publication of a major study in 1989.

Apart from his academic commitments, Bruce had a close interaction with a New Zealand scholar, Bill Packard as his Deputy Warden in Bruce Hall until his marriage to Ann in 1966. Reflecting on that period in an interview published in the student magazine, Woroni, he averred that residential scholarships were of paramount importance in enabling students of limited financial means to complete a university course. In this conviction, he echoed that expressed in Rhodes’ will about the adverse effects on a student’s academic achievement of scholarships which provided inadequate financial support.

Bruce also exemplified another of Rhodes’ convictions concerning the importance of public duties when he participated in a popular uprising against the Australian government’s commitment in 1973 to erecting a controversial communications tower on Black Mountain. In a foretaste of crowd funding long before the current electronic version, some 1500 Canberra residents contributed individually small amounts to fund a legal challenge to the proposal.

The access of this group, designated as ‘Bruce Kent and Others’, to court was vigorously opposed at all stages by a Commonwealth government determined to have its way. For example, the dissidents were threatened with liability to meet the costs of each lost construction day if their legal challenge was unsuccessful.

Nevertheless, a court hearing ultimately resulted in a decision in their favour, characterised at the time as a new chapter in community legal and environmental action. Shortly after the court ruled on the issue, the Government proceeded to commence construction. Bulldozers trumped courts. Technological advances inevitably ensured that the tower was destined for white elephant status.

On completion of his time at Oxford he returned to Australia to undertake a PhD at ANU under the supervision of an earlier Australian scholar, Keith Hancock. With that completed, he was appointed as lecturer in the History Department remaining there until retirement as a reader in 1997.

In a subsequent example of a principled response to a governmental policy, Bruce was a vocal supporter of the issues raised by the proponents of the Aboriginal embassy.

Written by Bruce’s friend Peter McCullagh (Victoria & Magdalen 1963)

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NEWS AND VIEWS FROM YOUR FELLOW SCHOLARS // Michael Bungay Stanier (Australia-at-Large & Hertford 1992)

Dr Tarun Khaitan was awarded the 2018 Letten Prize of 2 million Norwegian Kroner for his research on equality law. He is an associate professor at the Universities of Oxford and Melbourne. He plans to use the prize towards setting up the Indian Equality Law Programme at Melbourne Law School, which will fund doctoral and early career visiting scholars

Nicole Krzys (South Australia & University 2007)

I'm still living in Toronto, Canada and still married to Marcella who I met in my first month at Oxford - 26 years ago - because she shared a house with Rhodes Scholars Marnie Warrington-Hughes and Emily Moore. I'm founder of a training company, Box of Crayons, that teaches practical coaching skills to managers and leaders around the world. We're currently surfing the success of my last book, The Coaching Habit: it's just passed half a million copies sold. That's particularly sweet, because I spent a number of years pitching it to traditional publishers with no success, before deciding to self-publish it three years ago.

Nicole Krzys completed her training as a specialist Obstetrician and Gynaecologist in 2018. She has now embarked on subspecialist training as a gynaecological oncologist with Monash Health in Melbourne. An affiliation with the Ovarian Cancer Research Foundation has allowed her to return to an interest in laboratory based research and in July she was awarded the Keith Free Fellows Prize for Early Career Researchers in Gynaecological Oncology by ASGO (Australian Society of Gynaecological Oncology).

Tarun Khaitan (India & Exeter 2004)

In the photo above Nicole she is pictured with Professor Thomas Jobling, the founder of the Ovarian Cancer Research Foundation at the ASGO conference dinner in Taupo, New Zealand.

Andrew Murray (Rhodesia & University 1971)

Kate Robson (Australia-at-large & Christ Church 2008)

If Australians (and others) want to understand why vast numbers of Australian and other countries adults and children struggle with life, they should look no further than the physical, emotional, psychological or sexual abuse of children. Making a happier safer and more productive country requires understanding the long term and devastating impacts of the various types of child abuse, and helping to reduce its incidence significantly.

Rhodes Scholars typically seek to make a contribution to a better world. The executive summary of the December 2017 Final Report of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse is helpful in this regard. It provides key insights into a very large issue. The full report itself is helpfully broken up into discrete standalone sections. The Royal Commission’s Final Report and the three final reports already released – Criminal Justice, Redress and Civil Litigation and Working With Children Checks – contain 409 recommendations. Over five years, Commissioners travelled to every Australian state and territory to hold 57 public hearings and had 8,013 private sessions.

They read another 1,344 personal written accounts. The Final Report contains 3,955 deidentified narratives based on survivors’ personal experiences of child sexual abuse told during private sessions and shared in written accounts.

Andrew Murray sat on the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse

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Dr Kate Robson completed her specialist nephrology training in Melbourne and Oxford, achieving Fellowship of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians in 2017. Now a nephrologist in Melbourne, Kate cares for individuals requiring dialysis and kidney transplantation, and holds a NHMRC scholarship for her doctoral research investigating autoimmune kidney disease at Monash University's Centre for Inflammatory Diseases. She has developed an interest in online medical education, and was this year voted 'Best Blogger' by the American Journal of Kidney Diseases. Awarded MPhil in History of Medicine at Oxford, Kate continues to share this passion with colleagues and students. She is an active member of the Medical History Society of Victoria and St Vincent's Heritage & Archives Committee. Kate also enjoys playing cello with Melbourne's Corpus Medicorum orchestra.

Kate and her husband Maciej were recently delighted to welcome their daughter Alice Mae, born 23 October 2018.

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Malcolm Whyte (Queensland & Balliol 1947)

Perspective on old age I’m very often asked for that which I ignore.

When told, they explode, surprised, amazed, and then proceed to muse about wisdom of the aged.

Over-reaction I’d say, to a simple number of earth-bound years circuiting the sun, which, contrastingly, has spread light and warmth far and wide continuously and usefully for aeons of years.

And, by the way, however old we think we are, every atom in our body is billions of years old.

Malcolm Whyte says he has been told that, at 98 years of age, he is presently the oldest surviving Australian Scholar. Whether or not that is true he has expressed his perspective on old age in this little poem.

The Editor welcomes any personal or professional updates you’d like to share with your fellow Scholars. Send your pictures and news about careers, family, awards and appointments, travel, etc to Gillian Fullilove at gillian.fullilove@rhodeshouse.ox.ac.uk

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ghy

The Australian Rhodes Review (ARR) is jointly published by the Association of Rhodes Scholars in Australia Inc (ARSA) and Rhodes Scholarships in Australia Pty Ltd (RSA).

The Editor of the ARR is Gillian Fullilove (gillian.fulilove@rhodeshouse.ox.ac.ak).

The ARR is published three times a year and distributed free of charge to the community of Rhodes Scholars in Australia.

The material published in the ARR is supplied by numerous contributors and published in good faith. ARSA, RSA and the Editor do not make any representation, or assume any responsibility, in relation to the accuracy or completeness of the information supplied. Any views or opinions expressed in this material are solely the views or opinions of the relevant contributor.

Contributions to the ARR are welcomed by the Editor. Š Association of Rhodes Scholars in Australia Inc and Rhodes Scholarships in Australia Pty Ltd.

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