Australian Notes

Saturday, 28th January 2012

Only the simple-minded believe that any of the proposed laws to control addictive poker machine ‘gamblers’ will work. Legal restrictions never worked with addictive drinkers. Alcoholics Anonymous works, but it is voluntary and not imposed by the government. Meanwhile, the political mess over pokies illustrates again the fiasco of federalism today. State governments, always hungry for tax revenue, facilitated the suburban poker machine casinos. But they are only too glad to offload the crisis they created onto the federal government, which in turn will only fiddle with it as it did with gun control after the Port Arthur massacre in 1996. (Check with the victims of drive-by shootings.) If the federal government manages to impose new restrictions on poker machine addicts, it may have a very marginal effect and make reformers feel good for a while. But the addicts will soon find a way round them. Those Anglican ministers in Melbourne are probably right: only counselling and self-help offer any real hope. As Pogo said years ago, we have met the enemy and he is us.

The Gillard government should accept the advice of Warren Mundine and other Aboriginal leaders to reconsider and defer the proposed referendum on Aborigines. In its present form it deserves to be defeated as enshrining discriminatory racism, however benign, in the Constitution. The ideal towards which we should be working is an Australia in which all of us, of whatever race or ethnicity, are equal — in both daily life and the Constitution. But the predicted defeat of the referendum would embitter some of its partisans and harm the cause of integration. Rather than just defer the referendum, it would be best to scrap it altogether and let Aussie goodwill continue to take its healing course.

Some poignant echoes of the Cold War resounded in the Australian last week. The respected academic Desmond Ball published an article quoting another respected academic Coral Bell about an attempt in 1947 by some colleagues in the Department of External Affairs who were Soviet spies to recruit her to the Soviet cause — into what Minister R.G.Casey alleged was ‘a nest of traitors’ in the Commonwealth public service. She naively did not take these approaches seriously, but firmly if light-heartedly (‘I laughed merrily’) dismissed them as a splendid way to go to jail. Soon afterwards, the head of the department, the late John Burton, ‘sidelined’ her and posted her to New Zealand. She now believes that he provided ‘top cover’ for the Soviet spies in the department. She resigned in 1951 to begin her illustrious academic career. Coming from a woman of her integrity and long experience in international relations and diplomacy, her testimony must carry great weight. But it did not pass unchallenged. First to respond was another respected academic, Gregory Pemberton, a biographer of Burton, who dismissed the ‘story’ of ‘the alleged approach’ to Bell as ‘gossip’ that had ‘long been doing the Canberra rounds’ when he heard it 20 years ago. But that is neither here nor there. The Ball article is the first time that a figure of Bell’s stature has spoken of her experience in the 1940s in a national newspaper. What may once have been hearsay is now evidence. But there was more to come. In a letter to the editor, Burton’s daughter dismissed Bell as ‘still spitting sour grapes’ over the failure of her career in government. The daughter of the late Ric Throssell, another alleged protagonist of these events, wrote that her father’s life had been tragically ruined by the ‘defamatory accusations’ of the kind recorded by Ball. Emotions are still raw. Wounds still suppurate. Illusions still haunt the true believers. This will continue for years. The Cold War against communism was more than a struggle for power. It had a moral dimension that split families and sundered friendships. It was for many the central event of their lives. Some historians avoid those low, dishonest decades rather than scratch old scars. Others like Desmond Ball accept the obligation to try to record the truth. It is noteworthy that Coral Bell recalls her young colleagues and friends of the 1940s calmly, charitably and even warmly. She rejected their dreadful ideas and ideals but held her silence about them for 65 years (until they were dead). Her candour commands respect.

Take Michael Connor, historian, of Hobart. He could not find a publisher for one of his books, The Politics of Grievance. It is about the turbulent controversies of New South Wales in the 1820s, especially the Sudds and Thompson affair involving the cruel punishment of two malingering soldiers and the consequent death
of one of them. It bitterly divided New South Wales at the time (and in some circles still does). But for most people today the case is as dead as a doornail and publishers see no market for a book on it. So Connor put his book
on Kindle and thereby into its vast world-wide bookshop. It was easy to do and cost Connor nothing. For consumers the book is a snap at US$5.99. This form of publishing is a far better deal for writers than traditional self-publishing, which is not cheap and reaches no market. No surprise then that thousands of writers are turning to Kindle or similar methods. But where does it leave traditional booksellers of traditional books? Some — especially the small and widely supported independents — confront Kindle by offering coffee, a pleasant atmosphere for browsing, a venue for book launches, and sometimes good conversation. But many are closing down, victims of new, irresistible technology. Extraordinary that the federal government will not help by allowing them to import — and sell — traditional books at lower prices.

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