George Nikolic, Andrew Boxall, Paul Monk, Bruce Kirkpatrick, Frank Pulsford, Des Moore

Shameful Australians

SIR: Like Patrick McCauley (June 2010), I am proud to be—or, rather, to have become—Australian. To those proclaiming they are ashamed of being Australian I would like to say that I agree: I too am ashamed that they are Australian!

George Nikolić,

Hughes, ACT.

Turramurra Days

SIR: To a Turramurra boy, born and bred, Milton Osborne’s memoir “A Turramurra Childhood” (May 2010) was confirmation of a phenomenon which has long intrigued me, but which I suspected nobody else had noticed.

My father was the Turramurra greengrocer from 1930 until the 1970s. The Andersons, the Evatts and the Misses Smith were customers, and quite probably my father sold the fruit which decorated “Gwynneth’s grand ruin”. He knew the area and his customers well, and his stories of Turramurra in that period underline Mr Osborne’s theme, that leafy, discreet, prosperous and Presbyterian Turramurra was home to a quite disproportionate number of major figures in Australia’s cultural and intellectual life.

My own Turramurra childhood was twenty years later than Mr Osborne’s. By then, the General, as Brigadier Anderson was always referred to, and Mrs Anderson (incidentally, it was Ethel Turner, a Lindfield girl, not Ethel Anderson who wrote Seven Little Australians, but that’s a mere detail) were dead, and the Evatts had moved. To Turramurra cognoscenti such as my father, however, their houses remained Andersons’ or Doc Evatt’s, whoever their new owners might be. Miss Cossington Smith (and, in the old Anglo-Australian way, she was very much Miss Cossington Smith) was still painting her luminous interiors. The spinster ladies continued to proliferate. 

Parallel to Kuringai Avenue, but less elevated both geographically and socially, runs Turramurra Avenue. Here lived until his death in 1962 perhaps the most influential (but certainly the most unlikely) of Turramurra’s cultural and intellectual luminaries, Professor John Anderson. He too was a customer. In his biography of Professor Anderson, A Passion to Oppose, Brian Kennedy remarks on the apparent incongruity of the Andersons’ choice of residence:

Anderson did not choose to live near the university in a crowded workers’ suburb; instead, like any other professor, he chose the salubrious Turramurra on the north shore, an area disproportionately settled by prosperous Scots and Protestants … the Professor had his rural retreat to rest, contemplate and read and, at weekends to entertain his admiring students. His salary even permitted a maid and a gardener. As Marx said, it is from the bourgeois intelligentsia that good communists are made.

The next major parallel street to the west is Eastern Road. The prolific—in both talent and number—Mackerras family lived on Eastern Road: Charles, Malcolm, Alastair et al. Any appearance by or reference to Sir Charles in the media would inevitably be followed by my father’s description of the young Charles walking along Eastern Road to Turramurra station, oboe case in hand, on his way to school. Election nights in the 1970s and 1980s had two certainties: Malcolm Mackerras’s electoral pendulum, and my father’s recollections of the engagingly precocious Malcolm, aged five or six.

Turramurra was also surprisingly cosmopolitan in the 1930s and 1940s, thanks to the French, German and Belgian woolbrokers who shared Kuringai Avenue with the Osbornes, the Evatts and Miss Cossington Smith. It became even more cosmopolitan after the war, with an influx of prosperous middle-class Central Europeans, principally from Germany and Austria. My father was intrigued as to why they chose Turrramurra, rather than the more urban—“continental”, as people said at the time—eastern suburbs. The reason, they said, was that it reminded them of similarly leafy residential areas outside Berlin and Vienna.

So, in the 1950s the Wienerwald came to Turramurra—ladies’ hands were kissed in Rohini Street, and “Servus” was gently lisped; coffee shops opened, serving mochas and torte; kaiserbrötchen and schnitzel were available; and my father stocked kohl rabi and petits pois for his customers. It is now received wisdom that Italian immigrants sophisticated the Australian palate; if Turramurra in the 1960s is anything to go by, however, there is a good argument that the exposure of the Anglo-Australian professional and business classes to the tastes of their Central European neighbours was instrumental, in food as in many other domains, in making Australia a more civilised place.

Immediately after Mr Osborne’s article came Geoffrey Luck’s “How to Win and Lose a Nobel Prize”, about Sir Gustav Nossal. The Nossal family was among the Austrians who came to Turramurra, and his parents too were customers of my father. Sir Gustav’s father was a charming man, who owned a successful company manufacturing gas fires. At what must have been pretty much the same time as the events Mr Luck describes, he called in with my parents in semi-rural Bobbin Head Road to inspect the gas fire—naturally, one of Mr Nossal’s—which they had recently installed. After the fire had been admired, the grown-ups’ talk turned to young Gustav. Small as I was at the time, I do recall two things from that evening: first, that Mr Nossal’s son was pretty special indeed, and second, that as he spoke of his son, Mr Nossal wiped away tears. The parents of Kuringai Avenue felt love and pride for their children; Anglo-Australia just didn’t show it, at least not in that way.

Andrew Boxall,

Pymble, NSW.

Religion and Science

SIR: I thoroughly enjoyed Peter Barclay’s essay “Religion and the Rise of Modern Science” (June 2010). Let me begin, therefore, by praising its strengths, before point-ing out where I would differ with the author. It is scholarly, well reasoned, gentlemanly and a spirited response to a set of remarks on my part which might have been expressed more judiciously—or at greater length, had I been concerned solely with the subject of Christianity and science.

He claims that Christianity provided the foundation for modern science in three respects: (1) Christians have a respect for truth rooted in the idea of a monotheistic order of things and they developed skills in reasoned argument during many centuries of theological disputation. He even cites Freeman Dyson in support of the second of these claims. He draws particular attention to Augustine as remarking that it is a disgrace for Christians to be or appear to be ignorant of scientific matters and sets this against the passage I had alluded to, in which Augustine dismissed scientific investigation as mere vulgar curiosity. (2) He points out that all or almost all the great scientists of the early modern period were Christians, not least among them Galileo, Kepler and Newton, and (3) that they made their advances not by reviving Greek science, but by rejecting it, most notably the Aristotelian and Ptolemaic cosmology and various metaphysical doctrines of Plato’s. All these points he makes very lucidly. The only one of them I would query is the idea that Christians have some unusual commitment to truth, but of course that is his single most important claim.

He makes a number of other points, for example that Christians did not persecute learned pagans—or at least no more than learned pagans had previously persecuted Christians (Justinian, he points out, did not close the Academy because it was pagan, but because of the “militantly anti-Christian” attitude of its principal Damascius and that this should be seen in the perspective of the pagan emperor, Julian, having sacked Proaeresius from the Academy because he was a Christian); that Christian monasteries laboured to preserve classical learning, rather than neglecting, much less wilfully destroying it; but on the other hand that it might actually have been salutary had more Greek scientific books been destroyed in the downfall of the ancient world, so that they did not hold back Christian progress for so many centuries.

These are all interesting debating points, but he is surely on weaker ground here than in the three points enumerated above. Where was the problem in Damascius being militantly anti-Christian, if truth was with Christianity? Why did libraries, public and private, diminish so drastically in the West after the downfall of the classical world if Christianity was so committed to the preservation of classical learning? And does he mean seriously that it might have been better had more of the classical corpus been lost? In any case, the best—whether the complete writings of Democritus, for example, or those of the crucial third and second century BC Hellenistic scientists—were, indeed, largely lost at that time, certainly to the Latin West.

Dr Barclay was responding to my argument that it was Greek ideas that lay at the root of scientific method and modern science—albeit that wrestling with the limitations of Greek ideas, in physical science as in other domains, was how modernisation proceeded. By way of letter-length response to his essay, let me observe simply that of course the early modern scientists were Christians. It was somewhat difficult to be anything else in the Europe of the time. He will allow, however, that in direct proportion to the development of scientific understanding of the world, Christian orthodoxy and acceptance of the authority of the Bible, to say nothing of the Vatican, have diminished appreciably. In any case, the doctrines of Aristotle and the cosmology of Ptolemy, while widely accepted both in late antiquity and for many centuries into the Christian era, were not the best fruits of Hellenistic science and Platonism very definitely was not. This is a point long since made by Karl Popper and one with which he was specifically concerned in his last papers on Parmenides and the origins of Greek science.

But far more important in the history and philosophy of science than Popper’s last papers is Lucio Russo’s The Forgotten Revolution: How Science Was Born in 300 BC and Why It Had to Be Reborn (2004). Russo argues in great detail that it was in the third century BC, in the cities of the Hellenistic world, that scientific theorising, of the kind we recognise in the modern world, actually got started—after the death of both Plato and Aristotle and not because of them. This revolution petered out before Christianity was even born, because too few Greeks and even fewer Romans had any feel for either theory or mathematics. Scientific works and the cast of mind that had generated them, were all too often not preserved, even where works of poetry and history or legal argument were; whether by late paganism or by medieval Christianity. And while science got going again many centuries later, it was surely not because of the Bible or the intellectual authority of the Holy See. It was because, inspired partly by the recovery of fragments of the Hellenistic corpus—the works of Herophilus and Heron, for instance—Italian and other Western thinkers began again to theorise and experiment in the manner required for science to make progress.

The key to the debate, I suggest, lies in the remark by Galileo that Dr Barclay himself quotes: “as if this great book of the universe has been written to be read by nobody but Aristotle and his eyes have been destined to see for all posterity”. The third century BC Hellenistic scientists had just this attitude. Since the early modern period, it has gradually spread within our culture, though only ever to a minority of the population. And it has taken the form of asking not whether Aristotle should be the only interpreter of the great book of the universe, but whether that great book the Bible should be seen as having any authority at all in seeking to understand the universe. Monotheism may have been more consistent with a systematic approach to natural law than polytheism, but monotheism, in its Deistic form (whether that of Aristotle, Spinoza or the American sages) does not require the Bible, the doctrines of Christianity or the church, whatever organic role they may have played in the complex genesis of a scientific worldview.

Dr Barclay fires a broadside at Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins towards the end of his essay. Readers of Quadrant will be aware that I have, similarly, been critical of the polemical excesses and intellectual errors of these so-called “New Atheists” (in “Atheism, Music and Civilisation”, July-August 2007). They think Christianity should be abolished and are militant in their assault on it. I think it needs to be replaced and that the New Atheists seriously underestimate the challenge involved in doing this. Dr Barclay’s position would appear to be that Christianity is somehow the font of truth, whether theological or scientific, and is itself unproblematic. I find such a worldview indigestible. When I turn back to the Hellenistic scientists, on the other hand, I find what appear to be kindred spirits. These few thinkers, in a still largely “pagan” culture, appear unencumbered by either polytheistic or monotheistic religion, simply fascinated by the world and the cosmos. The closest to a worldview I consider both honest and compelling in the centuries between Galileo and Einstein is that set out by Alexander von Humboldt in the first and second volumes of his Cosmos, written in the first half of the nineteenth century. Dr Barclay appears to believe in some form of orthodox Christianity, the virtues of which he tenaciously defends, without allowing that it is anachronistic and, unless diluted to a Deistic monotheism, scientifically untenable.

Paul Monk,

Melbourne, Vic.

Electoral Fraud

SIR: Julia Patrick’s article on electoral fraud (June 2010) highlights the problem we face in pretending Australia is a true democracy.

The changes initiated in 1984 by Senators Robert Ray and Graham Richardson, as reported in Richardson’s book Whatever It Takes, with the involvement of Mick Young, Kim Beazley and Wayne Swan and adopted by the Hawke government, dealt Australian democracy a mortal blow. It was followed by the appointment to key positions in the Electoral Commission and the judiciary of people of Labor Party persuasion.

Senator Nick Minchin made several attempts to correct this but was defeated in the Senate until the 2004 election changed the balance. Even so, it took until April 16, 2007, for some amending but still inadequate legislation to surmount the hurdles to be passed.

What did it achieve?

Those wishing to enrol and lodge a vote including a provisional vote were required to first prove their identity by producing a driver’s licence, passport, birth certificate or some other much weaker reference—at least it provided a brake on the widespread corrupt voting. This was highlighted in 2008 by Michael Danby (ALP):

I believe that in Victoria the seat of McEwen, in Western Australia the seat of Swan, and in Queensland the seats of Bowman and Dickson all would have gone to Labor. The requirement to show photographic identification when casting a provisional vote was as bad as we predicted … it represented a major attack on the right to vote and we will be reversing these laws before the next election.

How many votes in a marginal seat does it take to win, if candidates in four such electorates lost because of a requirement that provisional voting electors have to prove their identity before their votes could be placed in the ballot box? Julia Patrick said Fran Bailey won McEwen by thirty-one votes, so if Danby was right there must have been over thirty-one votes disallowed from people who could not identify themselves. In that election an attempt was made to have 200 votes in Scullin counted in McEwen. How many “falsies” were in the other three electorates Danby complained about?

In 1996 the Social Services Department discovered that a man had registered fourteen false names of deceased young voters for whom he claimed social service allowances. When the fraud was uncovered, the Electoral Commission was notified and “discovered” that their roll included the names of the deceased. The Electoral Commission has many honest and concerned employees, and a handful whose integrity is questionable.

Bruce Kirkpatrick

(Co-founder and Past President of the H.S. Chapman Society),

via e-mail.

The Examined Life

SIR: David Barnett’s “John Anderson and the Examined Life” (May 2010) is more about David Barnett than about John Anderson. In any case, Barnett and Anderson, as reported by him, seem to regard the impossibility of proving the existence of God as proof that God does not exist. There is a simple explanation for the impossibility of proving the existence of God with mathematical or scientific certainty. If the existence of God could be proved with such certainty, the exercise of free will is negated. God has chosen to make Himself beyond mathematics or science so that we may freely choose to believe in His existence or not.

Barnett suggests that he “must be about the last Andersonian still active”. Clive James might have something to say about that. He also mentions “the freedom of religion that atheists fight for”. That battle passed me by. He also asks, “Is the right to life really a right when it is applied to women’s bodies?” Maybe not, but is certainly a right when it is applied to the bodies of their unborn children.

Frank Pulsford,

Aspley, Qld.

Labour Market Myths

SIR: As we approach an election in which the regulation of relations between employers and employees is again likely to be debated, Rafe Champion has reminded us that there is no substantive basis for prescriptive detailed regulatory legislation and institutions (“The Myths of Militant Trade Unionism”, June 2010). His reference to eight myths identified by William Hutt include one deserving of further elaboration, namely, “Labour has an inherent disadvantage in the contest with capital unless the state intervenes to provide assistance, especially by protecting the right to engage in collective bargaining and strike activity.”

The inherent-disadvantage thesis is based on the notion that there is an imbalance of bargaining power. At first glance this appears obvious, which partly explains why Australia has long been lumbered with prescriptive regulations. But whatever may have been the case in the distant past, employers and employees today operate in a labour market environment in which competitive forces are the major determinants of wages and conditions except where such forces are prevented by regulatory decisions, such as the prescription of minimum wages that have the effect of preventing the employment of low-skilled workers.  

Australia now has more than 800,000 businesses competing with each other and operating with workforces totalling over 10 million. In such circumstances no valid argument can be mounted that, without prescriptive regulations, employers as a group would be able to force wages down or impose “unfair” conditions on their employees. When working conditions are unacceptable to either party, each side has alternatives that, while not necessarily the first best option for either, prevent businesses as a group from being imposers and workers as a group from being slackers. It is sometimes forgotten that businesses need competent staff if they are to operate successfully.

It is also often overlooked that individual employees have bargaining power. In normal economic circumstances, they have the capacity to readily quit jobs if they feel badly treated by their employer or for any other reason—and well over a million do so voluntarily each year. Particularly (but not only) during the period of reduced regulation under the Howard government, individual employees have also increasingly been either bargaining for themselves or obtaining advice from the many employment and legal agencies, associations, and government inspectorates rather than relying on unions. During that period of reduced regulation, average hours of work and industrial disputation fell while real wages increased, which scarcely suggests employees’ bargaining powers would weaken in a deregulated labour market.

Unfortunately, however, the so-called Fair Work Australia regulatory regime installed by Labor fails to recognise the inherent bargaining power positions of employers and employees and operates to inhibit employment. It is to be hoped that the forthcoming debate will highlight the myths on which it is based.

Des Moore,

South Yarra, Vic.