Politics

Sir Samuel Griffith was chief justice of the High Court of Australia for sixteen years, from October 1903 to October 1919; but he had effectively retired in July 1919. Sir John Latham was chief justice for sixteen and a half years, from October 1935 to April 1952; but he had effectively retired in May 1951. Thus, Sir Garfield Barwick, who last month completed his sixteenth year as chief justice, has already established a record for active service in the position; if he remains in office until 24 October this year, he will have broken even Lathams formal record.

The holder of such a record term of office as chief justice would, on that ground alone, be assured of a unique place in Australian legal history; but in Barwick’s case, the years as chief justice are only a climax – perhaps even an anti-climax – to an extraordinary career.

It is impossible to think clearly about modern ideologies without perceiving their rootedness in class-related concepts of a better society. Nor can we understand this without seeing that class is a radical rearrangement in fact and in political discourse of the realities previously referred to as ‘orders’ and ‘ranks’. This vast shift into simpler and fewer forms of relation to the means of production is one way of understanding the enormous change in power and dynamism of western capitalist societies that we abbreviate for discussion into the familiar terms of the French and Industrial Revolutions.

This book is about the early stages of the establishment and evolution of native local government councils in Papua New Guinea. The author, David Fenbury, was in charge of the first phase of this undertaking and the objective of his book was to record the early sequence of events. He begins with an overview of the local government system in 1975 in a state of decay even while it was being extended to the few remaining areas that it had not reached by the time of independence.

It is difficult to decide whether this well­researched book is an important addition to the media history of Australia, or whether it deserves a place among the chronicles of the country’s moral development, or even as another testament to the differences and divisions that are created by federal systems of governance. Ina Bertrand has diligently collected all the details of lust, licence and legislation that have beset the entertainment industry over the past century and a half. She painstakingly leads the reader through the reasons and ramifications behind the Acts of State and Commonwealth Parlia­ments (starting with the first Public Entertainment Act in New South Wales in 1828) by which successive attempts have been made to regulate how and what the Australian public were allowed to see.

‘What is a leader?’ asks the rather breath­less blurb on the back of W. J. Byrt’s Leaders and Leadership. ‘Is he the product of the situation in which he finds himself? Is he the possessor of definite character traits? Does he have an inherent charisma which elevates him above his fellows? Are the determining factors social, political, personal or intellectual or some mystical combination of them all?’ These are interesting questions: the answers to them would be still more interesting. However, the best the author is able to come up with, after 175 pages of fairly repetitious theorising and examplifying, is the following: ‘Leadership is a process whereby the behaviour of the led is influenced by a leader of leaders. The process depends on the leader being able, or being perceived to be able, to assist the led in achieving the satisfaction of certain needs within certain situations.’

I would like to think that the author hiding behind the pseudonym of Lake O’Charley is Don Chipp. Chipp would certainly be an enthusiastic supporter of the industrial relations policies advocated by the key characters in Anatomy of a Strike. And Lake O’Charley, like Chipp, clearly has a good working knowledge of the inner world of industrial relations. But I’ll play safe and settle for the assertion that Chipp and O’Charley are like-minded in much the same way as are the two main characters in this book – Richard Altman, QC , Counsel for the moderate Oil Superintendents and Operatives Union (OSO), and Robert Parrish, recently appointed Minister for Industrial Relations in the Australian Liberal Government.