July-August 2023 Volume LXVII, Number 7-8, No. 598
More Dubious History on Forrest River
Songs from the Kitchen
The Baby Licence
From Wartorn Europe to Australia
Men Supplanted
Helping Us to Vote ‘No’
Contents
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The aim of much recent writing on alleged frontier massacres appears to be the conjuring of as many murdered Aborigines as possible. With its errors, omissions and disconcerting semi-novelistic approach to the events and non-events at Forrest River, Professor Kate Auty’s book is another example of that movement. That it has been blessed with the imprimatur of a university press makes this sorry work all the more depressingJanuary 17, 2024
21 mins
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Some of her favourite tunes were tinged by absurdity, but most were about love, many of the unrequited variety, as are most of the songs ever written. They are fading memories now, songs mostly forgotten, but not then, when I knew I was home from school and heard her voice issuing from the window at the back of our house as I turned in the front gateJanuary 13, 2024
15 mins
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A Quadrant short story: 'It’s all super simple, you shouldn’t have any trouble,' said Bunty Trotter, 'assuming compliance of course. And as you know it’s not actually compulsory -- only if you’d like the baby to get medical attention, or go to school, or travel'December 29, 2023
7 mins
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Peter Brune's Suffering, Redemption and Triumph will have wide appeal, not just to the families and friends of post-war immigrants, but to general readers fascinated by Australia’s military and social history. An overdue addition to the nation's history, this well-produced book is worthy, in the best sense of the word, and often revelatoryDecember 27, 2023
9 mins
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Given that today is Fathers Day, it seems right to note there is not one field of human endeavour which can now be regarded as masculine, or indeed as feminine, so is it any wonder there is so much confusion about roles for men and women? As a former British prime minister once said, 'Once a woman is made man’s equal, she becomes his superior'September 3, 2023
8 mins
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If only primary school students could vote, a teary Thomas Mayo writes in the Voice Handbook. Mayo and co-author Kerry O'Brien are to be commended for drawing attention -- albeit accidentally -- to the extent that propaganda has crept into our nation’s schools. I suspect Jacinta Price is still awaiting her invitation to stop by morning assembly and offer a balancing viewAugust 25, 2023
9 mins
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Western music consists of just twelve notes arranged across rhythms, registers, textures and forms. How do we know that a musical composition is truly great? We might consult a published score in the effort to discern genius, originality or inspiration, but that method barely scratches the surface in determining how great works come into beingAugust 23, 2023
17 mins
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In the music world and the art world more broadly, particularly here in Australia, we are failing to evolve the very best ideas. Rather, we are regressing into an era of cultural decline. The impetus for this deterioration seems to be the widespread and ever-growing prioritisation of a creator’s
identity ahead of his or her craftAugust 21, 2023
11 mins
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Henry Kissinger's new book brings a word of caution for today’s leaders: societies become great not by factional triumphs or the destruction of domestic adversaries, but by common purpose and reconciliation. He concludes that the criterion by which to judge the leader in history remains unchanged: to transcend circumstance by vision and dedicationAugust 20, 2023
9 mins
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Woke assertions are entirely self-referential. In the world of Woke, tolerance is replaced by coercion, debate by no-platforming, neighbourliness with surveillance, and civility by smear. All this and worse is easily observed in the ranting face of of increasingly unhinged activism, particularly in the fields of culture, education, gender and healthcareAugust 19, 2023
25 mins
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Philosophically, Sir Alfred Ayer was in a very awkward position: it was 1988, he was seventy-seven, and he was dead. Indeed, he’d 'passed to the other side', as he later put it. It was awkward because, as a very prominent and militant atheist, he shouldn’t be there, shouldn’t be anywhere. Indeed, he shouldn’t be at allAugust 14, 2023
22 mins
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She was always busy: the phone never stopped ringing at the Realities gallery, and people were steadily coming in. Figures like the painter John Brack or the art historian Patrick McCaughey visited to see the month’s show, and there were identities like Len French and Brett Whiteley. Sometimes even Sid Nolan would drop inAugust 12, 2023
15 mins
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One of Viktor Orbán’s leading advisers is Balázs Orbán, who shares the same surname but is not related. A former lecturer in law, he is the equivalent of a court scholar and the ideal person to ask about the country's long history of subjugation, the Fidesz government and the international Left's efforts to smear a vibrant democracy as a fascist state.July 27, 2023
25 mins
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William McConnel was an outstanding example of the principled Victorian entrepreneurs who forged modern Britain. But such a background is anathema to the cultural Maoists who currently run Wales, so his reputation and that of the slate-mining village he built needed to be dragged through the mud, which it duly has been on the most tenuous groundsJuly 26, 2023
8 mins
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If Australia is able to forge close military ties with Japan, Korea and India—and to that we can add the Philippines and Taiwan, not to mention the more ambiguous cases of Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, PNG, New Zealand, Sri Lanka and Indonesia—then the decision to be a founding AUKUS member is something rather more than, as a sneering Paul Keatring puts it, serving as America’s regional proxyJuly 24, 2023
20 mins
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We used to sneer at the importance once accorded the question of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, but this was a positively sensible inquiry compared with some we pursue today. The leader of the Liberal Democrat Party in Britain, asked if a woman can have a penis, hesitated not at all in replying that 'quite clearly' she could. This is the man who might well hold the balance of power in the next parliamentJuly 23, 2023
8 mins
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The English critic Frank Howes once observed that Edward Elgar reflected 'the last blaze of opulence, expansiveness and full-blooded life before World War I swept so much away'. Director Paul Yule's Elgar’s Tenth Muse is an account of the composer's quest to reignite the fires of inspiration after his wife's death. Underpinned by his gorgeous music, it is a film to be watched many timesJuly 22, 2023
12 mins
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Recent decades demonstrate that what makes a recognisable Australian in 2023 might as well be a different beast compared to, say, 1990, let alone any earlier. Increasingly it seems we fretted about the wrong thing. We were worried about multiculturalism's new arrivals, but we should have been worried about ourselvesJuly 21, 2023
18 mins
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If ever you’re in a situation where certain unpleasant realities must be confronted, the trick is to go vague. Joe Biden has made nebulosity -- indeed, incoherence -- his guiding policy. Likewise our current Prime Minister, who might have specified how the Voice would work but has chosen instead to serve up nothing but mega-gusts of wind and waffleJuly 20, 2023
16 mins
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It will strike those outside the teaching world as ridiculous that there are teachers who celebrate the death of the novel and the play as the predominant text forms studied in English. 'Down with Shakespeare, down with Dickens!' they cry, for it is their view that the form of traditional literature, as well as the content, is contaminated by the slew of likely -isms: racism, sexism, colonialism and so onJuly 17, 2023
16 mins
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After the author's ill-advised broadcasts from wartime Berlin, Winston Churchill spoke for many when he said of Wodehouse, 'His name stinks here ... if there is no charge against him, he can live secluded in some place or go to hell as soon as there is a vacant passage'. The creator of Jeeves and Bertie Wooster would never set foot in England againJuly 16, 2023
15 mins
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Ireland's ruling caste, once the Catholic Church, is now the post-Christian, hard-line, doctrinaire liberal-left. The bishops of yore were occasionally obliged to consult the Ten Commandments. But Ireland’s liberal-left merely take guidance from those deathless moral compasses, their feelings. There is little in the way of freedom of speech for those of whom they disapprove -- and even that vestigial fragment of eroded liberties is under renewed attackJuly 15, 2023
8 mins
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The madness of the period was unmistakable, few instances more so than the 1973 referenda asking voters to give the Commonwealth power over prices and incomes. Fortunately, it lost, albeit setting a precedent for the Albanese government to be just as silly in its attempts to control the Australian energy market, and to tell Australians that they should hand Aboriginal leaders what would amount to a national 'black cabinet'July 12, 2023
6 mins
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Contrary to what the New York Times would have its readers believe, Trump did not 'denounce the rule of law' unless every indicted man who proclaims his innocence is held to be denouncing it. What he asserted, quite correctly, was that law enforcement had been hijacked by Democrats and their elected prosecutors to take out the most formidable opponent they face in next year’s presidential election, namely himself.July 10, 2023
9 mins
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If current trends continue and Australians increasingly proclaim their indigeneity to census takers and the like, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population will overtake that of the nation as a whole within 80 years—at which point, everyone will be indigenous (and then some). That’s true even after accounting for Labor’s post-election decision to boost immigration. Big Australia will not be multicultural. It will be indigenous.July 7, 2023
8 mins
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What is happening in America disguised behind Black Lives Matter and in France behind the pension protests and subsequent riots could burst upon us as a consequence of the Voice movement. The causes used by the extremists are a smokescreen for their attacks on Western society. President Macron has used a word to which we will need to become accustomed — 'decivilisation'July 4, 2023
16 mins
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Contrary to what the Prime Minister asserted upon learning of Yunupingu's death, making claims for land rights was not his idea and, when he did have a significant role in the movement years later, there was a stench of corruption about his distribution of the royalties. As for the many obituaries in the press, scant mention was made of his 2006 appearance in a Darwin court accused of a violent sexual assault that threatened the life of one of his four wivesJuly 3, 2023
20 mins
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understanding now i understand e e cummings the lack of […]June 30, 2023
2 mins
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In Smiling Hands Locked in dawn light and ponded air […]
June 30, 2023
1 mins
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Bishop Berkeley’s Jack Russell Explains Colour Theory to Him I […]
June 30, 2023
2 mins
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Mountain sonnet Passing by the looming presence Of painterly, […]
June 30, 2023
1 mins
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Definitive Biography No scraps for vultures; diaries, notebooks, letters— burn […]
June 30, 2023
1 mins
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Legend After the foghorn sounded, I explained to my friend […]
June 30, 2023
1 mins
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Pell was the subject of a long-running and well-resourced police operation, which bore all the hallmarks of a sting, and which culminated in the cardinal ultimately facing trial on charges of child sexual abuse. How could such preposterous charges be brought? How could the Director of Public Prosecutions decide to proceed with an indictment on such implausible charges? Later, after the High Court acquittal, he spoke dismissively of 'Danistan', which is perhaps the best and only explanationJune 30, 2023
28 mins
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amor fati without any sense of urgency, a morning dove […]
June 29, 2023
1 mins
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The Song of the Postmodernist The trouble with a sunrise […]
June 29, 2023
1 mins
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Listen to Leos Leo in Egypt flooded the valley of […]
June 29, 2023
2 mins
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Vital signs (after Judy Cassab’s painting “Still life with blue […]
June 29, 2023
1 mins
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Tofu Teach ’em tofu. It’s just a block. White. Firm […]
June 29, 2023
2 mins
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Ocean Haiku i Under a blue sky a school of […]
June 29, 2023
2 mins
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Étude I’m slouched at a table surrounded by books, whose […]
June 29, 2023
1 mins
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Anemone for the counter-tenor, Max Riebl (1991–2022). Too beautiful for […]
June 29, 2023
1 mins
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Artists Sidney Nolan Couldn’t do Leonardo but did Australia […]
June 29, 2023
1 mins
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High Requiem The joy is not in the having, but […]
June 29, 2023
2 mins
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For Bayara Manusevitch for being the only woman to survive […]
June 29, 2023
1 mins
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Arthur Brown (1921–79) Army Intelligence, then two Chairs at London, […]
June 29, 2023
2 mins
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I’m Not Bitter This is the piece that should have […]
June 29, 2023
2 mins
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Death and Some Friends Death comes and sets a […]
June 29, 2023
3 mins
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Lark Ascending There is a space between desire where sound […]
June 29, 2023
2 mins
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Neighbourhood The evening came and signs were there— All screwed […]
June 29, 2023
2 mins
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Lockdown Pastoral If you just turn your head someone is […]
June 29, 2023
1 mins
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Last Bar Hardly bellbirds in a forest, these bleepers on […]
June 29, 2023
2 mins
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The man was heard saying, in answer to a question […]
June 29, 2023
5 mins
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The coffee was bitter and burnt. Jackson almost spat the […]
June 29, 2023
8 mins
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Sigismund Koch (1917–1996) was a forceful critic of his own […]
June 29, 2023
16 mins
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Forty-three years ago, the resident Aboriginal community declared that Noonkanbah […]
June 29, 2023
47 mins
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Last year, a few days before the federal election which […]
June 29, 2023
19 mins
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Sir: Keith Windschuttle’s article “Truth-Telling in Oceania” (April 2023) […]
June 29, 2023
6 mins
