Letters to the Editor - July 2001

James Griffin and John Wren Dear Editor, Some of your readers will be familiar with the problem. You set aside a few days to get to the National Library to pursue a research project. You obtain the manuscripts, order the material in the Petherick Room, and settle down to uninterrupted industry, when an avuncular bore with too much time on his hands buttonholes you and bangs on about his own project. You do not wish to appear uninterested, yet hope that the windbag will leave you alone and get back to his own table, perhaps even write the book that he rehearses so insistently as the precious minutes tick by. I certainly recall James Griffin importuning me at the National Library in 1996, though the date and time have mercifully escaped memory. I was not the Dean of Arts at Melbourne – this ceaseless invigilator of inaccuracy has that wrong. At the time, I had some sympathy for a rather forlorn figure, the picture of bourgeois respectability in his maroon waistcoat, persistently rebuffed by the epigones of the ANU and evidently in need of a sympathetic listener. He told me that my volume of the Oxford History of Australia confused John Wren with John Norton as the proprietor of the Melbourne Truth. I have to confess that I could not recall the passage in a book that had appeared ten years earlier, though I have since checked and find on page 112 that there is no confusion: it correctly identifies Norton as the proprietor. There are other passages in the Oxford History I checked after reading James Griffin’s essay in the most recent ABR (June 2001). I refer in that book to the allegation that a Labor member of the federal parliament was bribed by John Wren to vacate his seat for Ted Theodore (the subject of a royal commission). I refer also to Theodore’s involvement in the Mungana affair (the subject of another royal commission and treated at length by K.H. Kennedy). On this James Griffin waxes indignant, seemingly oblivious of Theodore’s business partnership with Wren. I finally refer to Chris McConville’s important article querying the influence in Labor affairs attributed to Wren. On this, Griffin is silent. I first became aware of his antagonism at the beginning of 2000 when he denounced my Concise History of Australia as ‘self-gratifying baby-boomer history’, too sympathetic to Aboriginals, feminists, and multiculturalists. I’m happy to plead guilty to all these charges and to aggravate the offences by adding class – better a self-gratifying baby-boomer than an elderly curmudgeon. I leave aside the rest of his essay, calumnifying the critics of John Wren, for he has a formidable task ahead of him if he is to rescue Wren from condemnation. Let’s hope he completes his task, for he has been at it for an unconscionable time. If he applies himself to completing his book, he will at least spare the rest of us from his tedious attentions. Stuart Macintyre, Melbourne, Vic. Robert Manne and 100 Years Dear Editor, In his ABR (April 2001) review of my book 100 Years: The Australian Story, Robert Manne makes several points that warrant a reply. First, he asserts, in relation to the impact of the Australian Settlement, that I ‘cannot make up my mind’. Manne says that I am guilty of a contradiction because I both praise the Settlement yet at other points depict as a ‘major misfortune’ that Protection had triumphed over free trade in the young Commonwealth. My argument may be right or wrong, but I think, with respect, it is reasonably coherent. I argue that the Settlement was inspired by the ‘fair go’ mentality and was a major effort to civilise capitalism. I argue further that Protection was driven by a complex of forces: ‘the dream of national progress, the lust for economic privilege and the politician’s need to win votes.’ In my narrative, I argue that the Settlement, in effect, was broken at the time of the Great Depression but was revived on a stronger basis by the 1940s ALP governments of Curtin and Chifley. I argue further that Menzies brought the techniques of the Settlement to a zenith and, in the tradition of Deakinite Liberalism, was our most successful leader at the art of civilising capitalism. When it comes to assessing the economic impact of the Settlement, I argue that the system was flawed from the start and that its class reconciliation benefits only came ‘at a price’. George Reid, who was defeated by Deakin, had wanted Liberalism to be defined more by the market and liberty rather than state intervention. Reid was vindicated when the Settlement was dismantled in stages from the 1970s to the 1990s. That dismantling, again, was driven by several factors: the unsustainable and unfair Protection system and the pressure to deregulate from global forces. I point out that the argument used in the 1980s to dismantle Protection – that it hurt consumers and distorted the economy – was nearly the same as that mounted by Reid. This story of political aspirations invested in the Settlement simultaneous with the unfolding depiction of its economic flaws is a two-tier approach, but I don’t think it is either too complex or contradictory. Second, it seems to me that Robert Manne has a tendency to read into the book arguments that I do not advance. For example, he says that I regard New Protection as ‘by far the most consequential development in Australia’s early years’. If such a consequential domestic development had to be identified from the book, I think it fair to say the text points to White Australia. Finally, he chides me, in relation to the Stolen Children, for failing to see that the welfare factor involved in the removals was ‘itself highly racist’ and that, by giving too much weight to welfare, I underestimate the racism at the policy’s heart. My own assessment based on a study of the primary documents said: ‘This was both a racial policy and a welfare policy. In terms of the contemporary Australian debate the claim that it was only a welfare policy cannot be sustained – nor can the claim that it was motivated just by race and not the welfare of the child.’ Paul Kelly, Sydney, NSW Mary Ellen Jordan and Maningrida Dear Editor, The increasingly common habit of white writers to do a tour of duty to remote Aboriginal communities under the pretext of helping the community and, on their return, writing a kiss-and-tell under the mask of concern is disturbing. Mary Ellen Jordan (ABR June 2001) has betrayed everybody she had contact with, black or white. Is this what fearless investigative journalists do when they pose as art gallery workers? I have been to many of the communities where Jordan and her fellows have been, and it is true that violence against women and drug and alcohol abuse are common, but I could write a similar account of the country towns where I’ve lived, and would anyone publish it? Not sensational enough? I wonder whether Australia is going through a psychological adjustment to the bridge-crossing and sorry-saying, and whether the antidote is to blame Aboriginal people for their degradation. The stripping of authority, productivity and dignity from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island people is not our fault. The problem is 1788. And it won’t go away. So let’s not pretend that Aboriginal people are the problem. Men are often violent toward women, regardless of their colour, but most men love and care for them, black or white. The greatest incidence of regular church attendance and teetotalism, apart from that within the Muslim community, occurs within the Aboriginal community, but try making a headline out of that! There is another side to contemporary Aboriginal life, but Jordan and others don’t want to tell it because it would have no hope of being published. No photographs of remote ‘paradise spoiled’, no interviews with drugged children. There are some prudent economic, social, and cultural measures being proposed by the likes of Geoff Clarke, Luritja O’Donohue, Noel Pearson, Pat Dodson, Evelyn Scott, and other prominent Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. They are pretty boring proposals, not good for journalism, but they will work and they will make Australia more dignified. Violence and substance abuse occur most frequently when hope and opportunity are withdrawn from sections of the community. The answer is not to further debase the victims of dispossession but to restore what has been taken away. You can’t give back all of Australia, but you can identify the root cause and deal with it. Let’s start by teaching Australian children the real history of the country. Let all Australians acknowledge that the removal of rivers cannot be replaced by a hollow promise to provide a single tap, that the usurpation of traditional law cannot be replaced by the Ten Commandments that our political leaders fail to live by, that the removal of land will inevitably impoverish any culture on earth. Aboriginal people are no better or worse than anyone else, but they are poorer and more oppressed. Let the fearless investigators turn their mighty minds to that. Let the historians stop trying to prove that Indigenous people deserved their fate and turn their minds to creating a civil society. Bruce Pascoe, Melbourne, Vic. The Poetry Australia Foundation Dear Editor, The Poetry Australia Foundation has recently been established to promote the writing, reading, reviewing, dissemination and enjoyment of poetry in all its forms. Membership is free. The Foundation has been incorporated as a nonprofitmaking, community-based organisation. Among other things, the Foundation will revive the magazine Poetry Australia, explore new ways of presenting and distributing poetry, run readings by local, national, and international poets, and conduct workshops, seminars, and conferences. It will support the work of Five Islands Press. In turn, all profits made by Five Islands Press will be used to support the work of the Foundation. Many people would read more poetry if only they could find it. Unfortunately, many bookshops no longer carry much poetry, and very little of what is published gets reviewed. One of the aims of the Foundation is to make it easier for people to find out about the poetry that is available, and to find the poetry that they like. The Foundation also wants to support writers at all stages: in the writing, revising, publication and distribution of their work. We will explore new ways of doing this, in books, pamphlets, installations and journals, on radio and television, on the Net – wherever there are readers or listeners interested in what contemporary poets are doing. To find out more about the Poetry Australia Foundation, or to inquire about membership, contact Ron Pretty at PO Box U34, Wollongong University, NSW 2500, or email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Ron Pretty, Wollongong, NSW

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