Australian Public Intellectual [API] Network

Network Scholars

The Greens: The success story of the election

Ben Oquist
‘Among the smaller parties, the losers were the Nationals, the Democrats and One Nation, and the winners were the Greens'. Michelle Grattan, Sydney Morning Herald, 12 November 2001. ‘For another minor party, the Greens, the election was as spectacular a success'. Age, Editorial, 13 November 2001. ‘[T]he Greens, the success story of the election'. Alan Ramsey, Sydney Morning Herald, 12 November 2001.On 27 August a notice was placed in the Prime Ministerial media advice cabinet announcing that Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock and Prime Minister John Howard would hold a ...
Click here to read more.

Network Review of Books

Snake Dreaming (2001)

Reviewed by Melissa Bellanta in the June 2002 issue.
Roberta Sykes' Snake Dreaming is a compilation of three autobiographical volumes: Snake Cradle (1997), Snake Dancing (1998) and Snake Circle (2000). Combined, these works trace Sykes' life from early childhood in the 1940s, to her graduation in the 1980s as the first black Australian with a doctorate from Harvard. (Evidently, a fourth volume is needed to cover Sykes' life since then). The most striking feature of this three-part narrative is Sykes' indomitability. Sykes has attacked her life with ferocious energy, frequently working herself to the point of exhaustion and beyond. The length ... read more.

Forcibly Removed (2001)

Reviewed by Tanya Knott in the October 2002 issue.
Forcibly Removed invites us into the life of Albert Holt and that of his family; allowing the reader to follow Holt's journey away from mission life, and to empathise with the social condition and perceptions of the Murri people. Holt's story begins as one of contrasts between the standards of living of small Aboriginal communities and their western counterparts, and between western religion and dreamtime, and western law and the law of the land. However, as Forcibly Removed progresses we begin to see how Holt's circumstances undergo a gradual change. Although human dignity continues to be ... read more.

Full Circle: From Mission to Community a Family Story (2001)

Reviewed by Jo Lampert in the June 2002 issue.
As a non-indigenous person reviewing a book like Full Circle, it is important to acknowledge up-front the problems of 'gaze'. This is probably also true of biography or autobiography in general: a reviewer can never really know the reasons compelling a writer to tell about their own life, or that of their family or communities. With indigenous literature, particularly in the reasonably common genre of 'life story', it can only be presumed that the purpose for writing the story is at least three-fold: to help the author on their personal journey to self-discovery, to inform the reader about ... read more.

Ghost Nation: Imagined Space and Australian Visual Culture 1901-1939 (2001)

Reviewed by Denise Whitehouse in the October 2001 issue.
Ghost Nation promises a new reading of imagined space and Australian visual culture, 1901-1939. Its claim to offer a 'persuasive framework for understanding modernism' feeds expectations of new research and insights into an era when the visual culture of the modern media began to compete for control of the public imagination. Disappointingly Ghost Nation does not offer primary research, a rigorous academic framework, or a new definition of visual culture. Rather it is an idiosyncratic re-reading of Australian art history's favourite construct, the conflict between the cultural establishment ... read more.

A Trick of the Light (2001)

Reviewed by Antonia Esten in the October 2001 issue.
A Trick of the Light is Perth historian/lifewriter Carolyn Polizzotto's latest exploration of creative non-fiction and of the highly subjective nature of truth. It takes the form of an autobiographical rumination on war and post-war sensibilities, on childhood and memory, on the family and post-war Australian culture, and on history itself, all seen from the very specific viewpoint of a baby-boomer eldest daughter. Polizzotto writes into the gaps of knowledge and memory, exploring the capricious nature of remembering. A Trick of the Light is a soft-focused and personalised look at life from a ... read more.

The Life of Riley (2001)

Reviewed by Iris Lowe in the Aug/Sep 2003 issue.
I must admit only passing familiarity with the achievements of Sam Riley. The sleeve notes promised the story of Lin Riley's search for her birth mother - 'a story of three generations and how Lin's journey into her mother's life would change the lives of Lin and her daughter Sam forever'. The fact that Sam Riley was an Olympic athlete and world record holder was incidental. Sam Riley writes the preface, giving her impressions of her mother, a central figure in her life. In the first chapter Lin Riley establishes the birth of Sam in 1972 as the key turning point in her life, the one which ... read more.

Need to Contact Us?