Australian Public Intellectual [API] Network

Network Scholars

Business

Gwynneth Singleton
Big business was almost invisible during the November 2001 election. Small business, on the other hand, was a target group for both the Coalition and Labor, particularly on the issue of the Goods and Services Tax (GST). The Coalition had moved to recoup some of the damage done to its support within the small business community by implementing changes to the GST reporting process. Labor hoped to garner small business votes from that dissatisfaction by promising simplified reporting procedures and some exemptions but misread the extent to which the GST remained an issue of high concern for small ...
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Network Review of Books

Donald Thomson in Arnhem Land (2003)

Reviewed by Christine Cheater in the September 2004 issue.
The fact must be stressed that the difference between a nomadic race with its peculiar and specialised adaptations and social obligations, and a gardening people, with an established village life, is more than a matter of environment, it depends on deeper factors, and has a definite psychological basis. (p118)These words capture both Donald Thomson's respect for Australia's indigenous people and his commitment to championing a way of life missionaries and government officials were bent on destroying. Donald Thomson, as readers of this handsome book will discover, was a man who was out-of-step ... read more.

If This Should Be Farewell: a family separated by war (2003)

Reviewed by Julie Ustinoff in the October 2003 issue.
Adrian Wood is the grandson of Ernest and Mary Hodgkin, a loving couple living in Singapore during the second world war who became separated through the events of war. In 1942, just prior to the arrival of the Japanese armed forces and the fall of Singapore, Ernest had managed to secure safe passage to Western Australia for Mary and their children. Ernest, however, remained behind. He became a civilian internee, and was first held at the Changi prison camp and then at Sime Road on Singapore Island where he remained until the close of the war. Wood's edited collection of letters exchanged by ... read more.

The Point (2003)

Reviewed by Gillian Dooley in the May 2003 issue.
The spirit of Iris Murdoch has visited Canberra and perched on the shoulder of Marion Halligan while she was writing her new novel, The Point. I am not suggesting that this is not absolutely a Marion Halligan book, full of the delights that implies; but there are too many echoes of the great British novelist's work to be ignored. For one thing, there are references throughout to favourite Murdoch motifs: the beautiful young man who resembles a Greek kouros; Julian of Norwich and her refrain, 'but all shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well' (p238); and ... read more.

En Passant (2003)

Reviewed by Stephen Lawrence in the June 2003 issue.
In grey, the sea forged between my thighs gasping for blue sky... ('Cumberland Island')Zan Ross' poetry is characterised by a wild precision. Part of the pleasure in reading her new book is peeling the rinds of association�that spin off the poems in all directions. Like Neo in flight, she flames across her landscapes--as much for dirty fun as from a sense of civic duty. 'En Passant is sex, sex, sex...' writes MTC Cronin -- but it is more than this. The multiplicities, speed-hump syntax and jazz-riffing had me revisiting and re-returning to (and re-arriving at) many of Ross' poems. And ... read more.

Shadow Lines (2003)

Reviewed by Fiona Probyn in the March 2004 issue.
As I write this review on campus at the University of Sydney (built on the grounds of an Indigenous meeting place), there are media reports of a riot in Redfern between police and Indigenous residents of the 'Block'; a seventeen-year-old Indigenous boy was killed after being impaled on a fence when his bicycle crashed. He thought police were chasing him -- the police say they were blocks away. The media reports it as another event of Indigenous violence, using words like 'rampage' and asking the police officers involved what it was like to be injured. It quickly became a story of whites under ... read more.

Greek Pioneers in Western Australia (2003)

Reviewed by Nonja Peters in the June 2004 issue.
Greek Pioneers is based on fine-grained historical study about the emigration (departure from one's homeland to a new country), immigration (entry into a foreign land with intent to settle), and chain migration of Greek pioneers -- mainly from Castellorizo, a small Greece-owned island located four kilometres off the Turkish coast but also from Ithaca and Kythera. It is written in language that makes it accessible to both a lay and academic reader. The inspiration for the book came in the mid-1980s from the Hellenic Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry who wished to take stock of the ... read more.

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