Category: Arts

  • ROBERT KUTTNER. The crash that failed.

    Review of “Crashed: How a decade of financial crises changed the world” by Adam Tooze, Viking.

    The historian G.M. Trevelyan said that the democratic revolutions of 1848, all of which were quickly crushed, represented “a turning point at which modern history failed to turn”.  The same can be said of the financial collapse of 2008. The crash demonstrated the emptiness of the claim that markets could regulate themselves. It should have led to the disgrace of neoliberalism—the belief that unregulated markets produce and distribute goods and services more efficiently than regulated ones. Instead, the old order reasserted itself, and with calamitous consequences. Gross economic imbalances of power and wealth persisted. We are still experiencing the reverberations.  (more…)

  • GREG LOCKHART. On reading Peter Stanley’s review of Peter Cochrane’s Best We Forget.

    I’ve just caught up with Peter Stanley’s review of Peter Cochrane’s Best We Forget: The war for white Australia, 1914-18, which was posted on Pearls and Irritations on 15 November 2018. I mention this, because it provoked a response that I think deserves underlining: John Mordike’s 15 November reply, which pointed out that a main thrust of Stanley’s review is ‘wrong’. Coming to terms with this thrust will then lead me into a discrete criticism of Cochrane’s book.  
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  • ANTHONY PUN. A response to Kim Wingerei -. It’s Time for Ethical Politics”

    Lord Acton’s “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely” is still valid today. Man is born innocent and in his acquisition of power, goes astray when unguided by morals and ethical principles. True wisdom is the ability to exercise power with moral and ethical dignity. If these abilities are lost, the people need re-education in moral and ethical philosophy. (more…)

  • LIONEL ORCHARD. Hugh Stretton in retrospect and prospect: reflections on Graeme Davison’s selected writings.

    Graeme Davison has edited a new selection of Hugh Stretton’s writings. Stretton’s work is widely admired but how relevant is it now? Davison presents an assessment. A response follows. (more…)

  • SUSAN CHENERY. The Scribe: portrait of Freudenberg, author of the speech that changed Australia (The Guardian 9.10.2018)

    Legendary Labor speechwriter Graham Freudenberg was at the centre of power for more than 40 years.  A new film sheds light on the man who wrote the script.   (more…)

  • TONY DOHERTY. Review of Hugh Mackay’s “Australia Reimagined – Towards a compassionate, less anxious society”.

    Hugh Mackay has spent almost his entire working life asking Australians about what makes us tick, what are our basic concerns, what gives us hope and meaning, why do we do what we do? His acute observation, honed by the skills of solid social research, has illuminated his readers for at least fifty years. His analysis has been unfailingly optimistic, accessible, crystal-clear and frequently provocative.

    His latest book, “Australia Reimagined: Towards a more compassionate, less anxious society”, is no exception. It extends his study of who we are and who we may become, challenging the better angels within us to build a more tolerant, compassionate and just society.  (more…)

  • SUSAN RYAN. Book launch. ‘Jesus the forgotten feminist’ by Chris Geraghty.

    The Catholic Church here and globally faces a crisis of loss of support arising especially from its deeds and omissions in relation to appalling sexual abuse of children.

    Our secular societies are experiencing a massive epidemic of allegations and charges of sexual harassment and violation of women in their workplaces, be they on film and television sets, in the training of medical specialists, on university campuses, in major corporations, within churches, just about anywhere where men dominate women’s employment prospects.

    The Catholic Church’s failure to protect children, and our first world societies’ failure to protect women, are connected in ways that makes Geraghty’s book highly relevant.   (more…)

  • CHRIS GERAGHTY. Jesus – The Forgotten Feminist.

    I have long been interested in why the officers of the catholic church have been so reluctant to consider involving women in the governance of their institution and in its sacramental ministry. So I decided to write a book about it. (more…)

  • GREG HAMILTON. Not much ado about a helluva lot.

    A stage play that wouldn’t make it into an Australian theatre today caused a helluva stink back in 1962 and said some wise and courageous (aka shocking) things about the ‘most sacred day’ in our national calendar. The reasons it wouldn’t make it today say something tragic about us as a society of people. (more…)

  • KIM WINGEREI. Book review of “Churchill and Orwell: The Fight for Freedom” by Thomas E. Hicks, Pulitzer Prize winner.

    At first glance they may seem like an odd couple, but their influence on the seminal events and the thinking of the 20th century is equally profound. Winston Churchill defined and led the resistance against the tyranny of Adolf Hitler; George Orwell understood and explained the nature of totalitarian regimes. They were both men who were prepared to change themselves in order to change the world.

     Pulitzer Prize winner Thomas E. Ricks has written an insightful account of these two men whose paths never crossed and came from opposite ends of society and ideology. The book focuses on their life and deeds from the late thirties until after the Second World War. Ricks does not eulogise either man, he recognises their flaws and earlier failures, yet puts them both in the historic perspective that they deserve. (more…)

  • RAMESH THAKUR. Incorrigible Optimist by Gareth Evans, a Political Memoir – A review-Part 1of 2

     Gareth Evans’ memoir makes clear his vision of good international citizenship would have foreign ministers pursuing national self-interest within the ennobling vision of global moral purposes.

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  • JOHN TULLOH. Through the Iron Curtain to Moscow and across Siberia 50 years ago.

    Earlier this year, Pearls and Irritations ran an account of the 50th anniversary of my first major foreign news assignment, the Six-Day War. This is about another 50th anniversary assignment, the Russian Revolution. The centenary is next month.  (more…)

  • EVAN WILLIAMS. Dunkirk – film review.

    We all know the story – or do we?  It was one of Britain’s great wartime triumphs.  With the British Expeditionary Force driven back to the French coast by advancing German armies, thousands of Allied troops were stranded on the beach at Dunkirk, and the call went out from Winston Churchill to rally the little ships and bring them home.  Countless small craft – fishing boats, launches, dinghies, even rowing boats –  crossed the Channel  to gather survivors and ferry them home for joyful reunion with their families. (more…)

  • RAWDON DALRYMPLE. A personal link to World War One.

    All of us who have a stake in understanding the Great War should be grateful to Joan Beaumont for her magisterial history of Australia’s involvement in that terrible conflict (Broken Nation: Australians in the Great War). (more…)

  • JUDITH WHITE. Risks of gallery expansion

    The NSW Coalition government has allocated $244m towards a major new building at the state Art Gallery. But questions are being raised about its ongoing funding and its mission as a public institution. (more…)

  • KIERAN TAPSELL. ‘The Attachment’ by Ailsa Piper and Tony Doherty.

    The subtitle to this book is Letters from a Most Unlikely Friendship, and it consists of a series of letters with some occasional background comment between a “lapsed” Catholic (although none of the authors use that word) turned “agnostic with pantheist leanings” and a well known Sydney Catholic priest, Tony Doherty.  (more…)

  • JUDITH WHITE. Arts policy and the need to counter the undermining of public cultural institutions

    Writing a book is a solitary occupation, but with this one I’ve been constantly aware of the hosts of people – staff, members, volunteers, benefactors – who are concerned about what is happening to our public institutions. And they are public institutions: they belong, by Acts of Parliament, to the people.  (more…)

  • MARK COLVIN. “Four Weeks One Summer” by Nicholas Whitlam

    In the summer of 1936, over just four weeks, it all went wrong – for democracy and for Spain, even for the British royals. Politicians failed, and Hitler was emboldened to plan a new European war, and more.  

    When some army generals sought to overthrow Spain’s elected government Francisco Franco quickly emerged as their leader; Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy supported him with men and matériel; pusillanimous politicians in Britain and the United States, even in France, turned a blind eye – and the Spanish Civil War was on. Edward VIII took a scandalous holiday cruise with Mrs Simpson, Berlin staged the greatest sporting event of modern times, the alternative Peoples’ Olympiad never came to be, and Barcelona was transformed into a unique workers’ paradise. All this in four weeks. It was an incongruous, at times brilliant, juxtaposition of events.   (more…)

  • ALISON BROINOWSKI. What Australian Foreign Policy?

    Insider, analyst and adviser Allan Gyngell finds that Australian defence and foreign policy are more bipartisan than ever. But even as Australia’s national security agenda metastesizes, we have more to fear from an unreliable ally and an increasingly lawless world.   (more…)

  • SUSAN RYAN. Book review. The Dark Flood Rises: Margaret Drabble.

    As our sort of societies experience the demographic revolution, most of us are living much longer than ever before, in cultures that have not responded well to this increased longevity. We also find ourselves living in cultures that so far have failed to develop dignified and helpful practices and values for dealing with the inevitable.  
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  • RICHARD LETTS. National Opera Review: propping up the 19th Century

     

    The National Opera Review has reported. Instigator George Brandis is probably well enough satisfied.

    The Terms of Reference are pure Brandis. The name is National Opera Review, the game is a review of the four larger companies funded by the Commonwealth. Excluded are the Victorian Opera and the numerous small companies that are the growing edge of opera in Australia. (more…)

  • Gough Whitlam and Blue Poles.

     

    Blue Poles is in the news again. It was purchased for $1.3 million and is now valued at $350 million. The disparaging nature of the campaign against the purchase is reflected in Molnar’s cartoon (below) of 5 April 1974.

    Mungo would be chuffed!

  • ALISON BROINOWSKI. Your laptop is watching you: ‘Snowden’ the movie.

     

    Before Snowden comes on, there’s a short film of Oliver Stone, the director, warning cinema audiences that they can be surveilled, so please turn off their devices. Even as a humourless joke for geeks, it sets the sombre tone of the movie to follow. This is a feature version of Linda Poitras’ Citizenfour (2014), that adds political and personal narratives to the story of the young intelligence employee who exposed America’s mass surveillance of the world’s communications. (more…)

  • EVAN WILLIAMS. Film review: Truman

     

    Directed by Cesc Gay, Truman is a wonderful Spanish film about a couple of old buddies saying goodbye for the last time. One of them is dying of lung cancer, and the film traces their last four days together in Madrid. The good news is that Truman isn’t nearly as miserable as it sounds. In some reviews –and in the ads – I’ve seen it described as a “comedy-drama,” though the comic elements are often hard to discern. (more…)

  • MILTON MOON. Waiting for Godness -a narrative poem

    by Milton Moon.©

    I’m due to die sooner rather than later.
    My wife of sixty-seven years has already gone,
    her mortal remains,
    in ashes waiting for mine.
    Together they’ll go, somewhere
    as part of the seasons
    or the tides ebb or flow.
    She is still with me,
    I talk to her often,
    burning incense twice a day
    and telling her
    “incense is dispersed for the soul
    of the young girl.” (more…)

  • EVAN WILLIAMS. ‘Money Monster’. Film Review

    It occurred to me watching Money Monster that George Clooney is Hollywood’s Malcolm Turnbull. Think about it. Both are rich and famous. Both are smart, good-looking and smooth-talking. Both exude confidence and charm. Like Malcolm, George has no difficulty persuading us that in any unforeseen emergency he’s the one who can save us from chaos or disaster, even a budget deficit or a dreaded hung parliament. But Clooney is something more. He’s one of that rare species – the old-style Hollywood leading man. A generation ago we had Cary, Gregory, Charlton, Spencer, Burt and the rest, all in their prime. Now we’ve got George. And we’re lucky to have him. (more…)

  • EVAN WILLIAMS. Chasing Asylum. Film Review.

    I rate it among the best Australian documentaries ever made

    If you want to see Chasing Asylum, Eva Orner’s brilliant new Australian documentary, my advice is to hurry along. At last count it was showing on just two screens in Sydney, and when I went along to the Dendy in Newtown on a recent Sunday afternoon – usually a good time for ticket sales – I was directed upstairs to a little cinema at the end of a long corridor to find the place half full. The ads are promoting it as “The film the Australian Government doesn’t want you to see” – and that I can believe. But does anyone want us to see it? Not the distributors – there’s barely a mention in the ads. Not, apparently, the ABC or SBS, who should be seizing it with both hands for prime-time screening during the election campaign. Perhaps that’s the problem – the film is politically explosive, and everyone seems to be running scared, including, of course, our political masters. (more…)

  • Julianne Schultz. Australia must act now to preserve its culture in the face of global tech giants. Brian Johns Annual Lecture

     

    At the first Brian Johns Annual Lecture, Julianne Schultz spoke of the challenge to Australian culture by the global tech giants. In the summary of ‘what can be done’ she said:

    So what can be done to join the dots in the Age of Fang?

    We need to become better advocates of the value of cultural investment. We need to find new ways to put the case so we can win political and bureaucratic supporters with hard headed and sustainable arguments.

    We need to find ways to embrace the particularity of being Australian in a global context and find new ways to express that.

    We need to be willing to challenge the market if it is not delivering – adding our voices to those demanding that the Fangs pay their taxes, and not allowing them to unfairly distort the market.

    We need to be prepared to use the legal and other means at our disposal to demand that laws are not broken.

    We need to use the leverage we have as the generators of 2% of global GDP to get returns and opportunities to participate that are our due – a digital news initiative here for instance, or a major contribution to the digitisation of cultural assets without giving up the copyright.

    We need to leverage 50 years of cultural investment to ensure our stories are told not only to ourselves, but the world.

    If, as the scholars have identified, the dominant companies in the Age of Fang have the power to command attention, communicate news, give voice, enable collective action, hold power to account and influence votes, we need that to be done on our terms.

    This power needs to be institutionalised so that it is civically accountable. The smartest Fangs understand that playing a civic role brings extra kudos and wealth, but there is a need for vigilance to sustain this.

    Getting the settings of this institutionalisation will be challenge of the next decade. It will require a carrot and a stick.

    Some Americans are suggesting a royalty should be paid on data mining of personal information, as is done with the mining of minerals, and returned to the country of origin.

    Europeans are challenging antitrust and privacy. G20 is renewing attention on tax to examine ways to ensure that the wealth generated is spread appropriately, and not left to a few rich dudes to distribute to suit personal philanthropic ambitions.

    The market alone won’t do this. We know from the process of creating cultural institutions that there is a role for the state – a place where in the words of Robert Menzies, the future and past can connect in the present.

    Even in this rapidly globalising age, the nation state remains the best organising principle we have. I am not alone in feeling uneasy about the proposition we should give it over to a new oligopoly that is present every moment of our lives.

    The purpose of cultural investment in the Age of Fang needs to be reiterated and maintained. As a nation, we need to take this seriously now if we are not to become an asterisk. The purpose of cultural investment in the Age of Fang needs to be restated, funding maintained and opportunities to innovate and export enhanced.

    Otherwise we will become invisible at best and tribal at worst. If that happens we will be reduced as citizens and countries to passive consumers in a digital marketplace that values us only for our ability to pay.

    The Brian Johns lecture was presented by the Centre for Media History at Macquarie University and the Copyright Agency.

    A fuller version of Julianne Schultz’ address can be found at:

    https://theconversation.com/australia-must-act-now-to-preserve-its-culture-in-the-face-of-global-tech-giants-58724

    Julianne Schultz is Editor and Professor, Griffith Review.

  • Kim Williams. Fair use does not mean free: Copyright recommendations would crush Australian content

    As someone who has spent my life running organisations that take risks, invest billions and innovate to provide the best of local and international content to Australian consumers, reading the Productivity Commission’s draft report into our intellectual property arrangements was profoundly dispiriting.

    I cannot think of another recent report that so seriously misses the main drivers of its area of inquiry – namely innovation and the incentives to produce new work. At the same time, the report treats Australian creative content and its production with a disdain bordering on contempt, and that is surprising for any economic statement.

    The commission makes recommendations which would have such a deeply detrimental impact on the ability of film and TV makers, writers, artists and journalists to tell Australian yarns, and make a living doing so, as to be worthy only of rejection.

    Take the commission’s conclusions on what drives innovation. The draft report claims our intellectual property and copyright settings inhibit investment and innovation. Really? Most people who run businesses and invest money know that what really drives innovation is a clear operating framework which enables companies and entrepreneurs to manage their risk appetite and capital investment, as well as access to highly skilled people.

    In the creative landscape, the bedrock of production is copyright – the Copyright Act provides the critical framework for ensuring returns from investment.

    The Prime Minister recognised the drivers of innovation in a statement last year. He committed over $1 billion to ensure the right incentives to innovation were in place; to encourage risk-taking; and to promote science, maths and computing in schools. There was no mention of intellectual property in his statement, given there is already a clear protection framework in place.

    So, having spent considerable amounts of time answering the wrong question, the commission then demonstrates what can only be described as a breathtaking disregard for the creativity of Australians. It dismisses concerns that its recommendations would lead to less Australian content, with this response: “most new works consumed in Australia are sourced from overseas and their creation is unlikely to be responsive to the changes in Australia’s copyright (laws).” So, that encapsulates the commission’s thinking – American and British material will suffice and Australian original work doesn’t really count for zip.

    But make no mistake, if the commission’s recommendations to implement “fair use”, for instance, were implemented, there would be less Australian content on our screens, on our bookshelves (real and virtual), and in our schools and universities.

    “Fair use” is an American legal principle which would allow large enterprises to use copyright material for free, which, under Australian law, they currently have to pay for. PwC recently estimated that introducing “fair use” in Australia could result in a loss of GDP of more than $1 billion.

    PwC’s report (provided to the commission) outlined three reasons for this collapse. First, “fair use” would strip millions away from Australian storytellers and content creators because governments, companies and large education institutions who now pay to use content, would stop paying as much or stop paying at all.

    PwC examined what happened in Canada when similar changes were made in 2012. Universities and schools refused to pay for the educational content they used. This led to a 98 per cent reduction in licensing revenue,  the closure of many publishers and a loss of jobs. Oxford University Press stopped producing Canadian textbooks for schools.

    The Canadian Writers Union’s John Degan described the effect this way: “We are headed back to the bad old days of 40 or 50 years ago, when everything you read in Canadian schools was produced in the US or Britain.”

    Second, “fair use” would permanently lift legal costs in Australia. US copyright cases are almost five times the volume of cases in the UK, whose law is comparable to ours. Good for lawyers, bad for creators and consumers.

    Third, fair use would undermine the effective and fit-for-purpose licensing system that has evolved here allowing Australian teachers to share and copy almost every book, magazine, image or journal published in the world, with their students, for less than the cost of a single book each year. This fee is paid by school departments, not students.

    None of this means that we shouldn’t continue to update our Copyright Act. Industry-led reforms to the Copyright Act are already well advanced in an unprecedented collaboration between rights holders, libraries and education institutions. They deliver on a promise by the Attorney-General George Brandis to review the Act in the government’s first period in office.

    So let’s aim for sensible reform which balances the incentives and protections for creators with the rights of consumers to access wide ranging material on fair terms.

    But remember, fair does not equal free, and no one needs a manufactured revolution driven by armchair economists who want to blow up Australia’s content sector – as this disappointing report proposes.

    Kim Williams is chair of the Copyright Agency and Viscopy. He is a former CEO of NewsCorp Australia, FOXTEL, Fox Studios Australia, the Australian Film Commission, Southern Star Entertainment and Musica Viva Australia.

  • Evan Williams. ‘A Month of Sundays’. Film Review

    I went to see A Month of Sundays, Mathew Saville’s new Australian film, expecting a comedy about real-estate agents. It was the impression I’d gained from a careless reading of publicity handouts and other usually unreliable sources. And sure enough, the film has some witty lines and one or two moments of gentle satire at the expense of the real-estate profession. But Saville’s film isn’t really a comedy – unless you get your laughs watching lonely old widows coping on their own, grieving teenage boys pining for parental love, divorced husbands pining for lost wives, and other unhappy souls. (more…)