Australian Public Intellectual [API] Network

Network Scholars

A Fair Queue? Australian Public Discourse on Refugees and Immigration

Katharine Gelber
The term ‘queue-jumpers’ and variations on this theme have been widely applied in recent months in Australian public discourse, especially since the commencement of the so-called ‘Tampa crisis’ on 27 August 2001, when a boat carrying 438 unauthorised arrivals heading for Australia sank in international waters in the vicinity of Christmas Island.1 This paper analyses this discourse in three components. First, I will identify the use of the queue analogy within contemporary Australian public discourse. I will consider definitional and historical uses of the term ...
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Network Review of Books

Radiance: the Play and Screenplay (2001)

Reviewed by Donald Pulford in the October 2001 issue.
Theatre, the most ephemeral of the arts, is a multi-mouthed monster which transforms scripts into bodies, sound, forms and light, leaving piles of costumes and sets, and memories. Many of us can nominate magnificent nights in the theatre of which nothing remains but our programmes and fading recollections. A script provides a useful indicator of what has happened and what might still happen in a theatre. But a script, too, may moulder and die unless it maintains currency through publication. Thus, if Currency Press did not exist, it would be necessary to invent it. Currency was founded by ... read more.

Making the Australian Male: Middle-Class Masculinity 1870-1920 (2001)

Reviewed by Dean Durber in the July 2002 issue.
From the start, Crotty claims his position as a constructionist. 'Biology and nature are employed as legitimations for gendered behaviour, but do not actually create it'. He is not in the Biddulph camp. He recognises Australian masculinity as historically specific, changing and changeable, and sets out to prove this point. An increasing emphasis on the protection of national borders and the fear of illegal foreign invaders. The rise in budget allocation to the army defence forces. The awarding of medals to centenarians who have made it through Gallipoli and the two world wars -- 'great events ... read more.

Flight Animals (2001)

Reviewed by Stephen Lawrence in the November 2002 issue.
The possibilities of human movement sends my mind on a flight into the wordless; my mind's winged motion upward and soaring. (`Ode to a Gymnast')Bronwyn Lea's poems live in motion. Flight is travel, and it is also escape. ('I have no body, only belongings.') Restlessness pervades this first collection, and it gives her the freedom to range far and wide. Equally intelligent but lesser poets might have allowed themselves to soar into ethereal self-obsession, and Lea does look inward but is aware of merely 'celebrating only myself -- my chic / design, my sheen, my sheet metal surface, / my ... read more.

Illywhacker (2001)

Reviewed by Melissa Bellanta in the April 2003 issue.
My initial encounter with Peter Carey was decidedly nasty. Some years ago I read The Tax Inspector, and could hardly sleep for days in horror of Benny Catchprice. Carey had drawn Benny with a savage verisimilitude: his pale angel-beauty and violent instability making him almost surreally lifelike, like Martin Bryant walking from a nightmare into Port Arthur's reality. Of course, Benny Catchprice is not Carey's only creation -- nor is nasty his only register. Indeed, now that University of Queensland Press has reissued his back-catalogue (along with a new collection of his stories), one thing ... read more.

Charles Darwin's Beagle Diary (2001)

Reviewed by Dianne Williams in the May 2003 issue.
Charles Darwin (1809-82) is best known to the layman for his scientific contributions to the theory of evolution. A natural scientist, Darwin's path in life was dramatically changed when, as a young university student, he was offered a position as naturalist on board the HMS Beagle in 1831. Before this he had been a young amateur keenly interested in scientific observation of the natural world, heading towards a career in the church. After five years aboard the Beagle the career in the church was forgotten and he built up a reputation as a scientific writer and creative thinker. Charles ... read more.

The Pea-Pickers (1942) (2001)

Reviewed by Cath Ellis in the October 2001 issue.
It is no great secret that the publishing of 'classic' Australian literature has dwindled over the last decade or so. Teachers of Australian literature have struggled to find enough works of Australian literature still in print with which to piece a subject together and interested readers must now rely on libraries and second hand bookstores. Few Australian novels from the first half of the twentieth century are now easily available. For many years, almost sole responsibility for the publication of late nineteenth and early twentieth century Australian literature has fallen to Angus & ... read more.

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