Quadrant magazine, the self-described “leading general intellectual journal of ideas, literature, poetry and historical and political debate published in Australia” has published a book titled The Howard Era.
The book is co-edited by Quadrant editor Keith Windschuttle, University of Queensland academic David Martin Jones, and the Australian Right’s Man Of A Thousand Causes, Ray Evans. The contributors are Tony Abbott, James Allan, Chris Berg, Ian Callinan, Sinclair Davidson, Bob Day, Kevin Donnelly, Michael Evans, Ray Evans, David Flint, Gary Johns, David Martin Jones, John Kunkel, Barry Maley, Gregory Melleuish, Alan Oxley, Ken Phillips, Andrew Shearer, John Stone, Tom Switzer and Michael Wesley.
As you will see, this book is the collective effort of 22 men and no women.
Quadrant, of course, has form on this front. The December edition carries 23 articles and reviews whose authors include 22 men and one woman. In the Letters pages, eight letters are by men and one (by far the shortest) is by a woman. The two main themes of the letters are also revealing – primal screaming about legal abortion leading to a “eugenic resurgence” and complaints that the Pope is a dangerous lefty.
One of the articles is titled “Celebrating Quadrant“, and begins:
To mark our 500th issue in October, Quadrant held a celebration dinner at Fort Denison in Sydney Harbour on Wednesday, October 16, attended by 180 guests. Several people spoke to mark the occasion
The several people were (drumroll) John Howard, Keith Windschuttle, Peter Coleman, Les Murray and a certain gentleman named Tony Abbott.
Now I don’t know which of Ray Evans’ significant others are female writers and intellectuals. However, Keith Windschuttle’s wife Elizabeth Elliott is an accomplished author and educator and could doubtless have contributed something to the collection and/or suggested names of other accomplished female authors if asked. As for David Martin Jones, I once worked in the same academic unit at UQ as Professor Jones and can attest that it is full of accomplished and well-connected female scholars in political science and international relations who could doubtless have contributed to the book if asked. Indeed, Tony Abbott might have drawn the project to the notice of his colleagues Julie Bishop, Fiona Nash, Peta Credlin and others, any one of whom could no doubt have produced an insightful and informed perspective on aspects of John Howard’s life and times.
And why are there no contributions by Judith Sloan, Julie Novak, Janet Albrechtsen, Miranda Devine, Angela Shanahan, Bettina Arndt, Grace Collier or even Quadrant‘s own Philippa Martyr?
I suspect that this is one of those books that one doesn’t need to read in order to know what’s in it. The nearest hypothetical left-wing equivalent I can imagine would be an anthology on the life and times of Chairman Mao written and edited by a collective of former BLF officials – which, needless to say, would have much the same gender balance.
Howard himself is quoted in the book as saying “a conservative is someone who does not think he is morally superior to his grandfather”. One has to ask whether an Australian male conservative is someone who thinks he could have come into being without his grandmother.
One could also wonder if the end of that quote(in the last paragraph) should read, ‘he knows he is’.
We women really scare the crap out of them, don’t we?
Well yes Paul …
That said, in an age that seems a longtime ago now but simply can’t be, I knew Elizabeth Windschuttle/Elliott — she used to be associated with MacLeay College up in East Sydney.
Describing her as “an accomplished author and educator” sounds greatly too charitable, IMO. Aware as I am of the laws of defamation, and its implicatiuons for this blog, I will not attest further to her claims than that.
It is reckoned — though how would one know? — that Elizabeth was the driving force behind Keith Windschuttle’s enbrace of the unhinged right. Personally, bearing in mind the high/low culture debates of the 1980s and his place in them I’d say Windschuttle was an incipient rightwinger all along.
Gee, I wonder if any former National Servicemen who served in the Viet-Nam War were invited to write their views of Mr J W Howard, a former Leading Light in the anti-communist Young Liberals. And …. I wonder if any Diggers who had the benefit of Prime Minister Howard’s photo opportunities as they emplaned to go off to more recent nasty conflicts were invited to write something in this book too? Oh, I see, the oversight will be corrected and airbrushed in the rushed-to-print SECOND edition. Jolly good. Carry on.
(Better buy a First edition right now, before remaining stocks are shredded. Wonder what you could get for a first edition on eBay in 18 months time?)
I am certainly among a tiny minority who waded through Howard’s tedious and cliche ridden “Lazarus Rising”. I can say that the one important truth that was not either overlooked or made to disappear from those pages is Howard’s insistence that mistakes and errors should NEVER be admitted to.
http://larvatusprodeo.net/archives/2013/09/saturday-salon-269/#comment-437165
That being the case, what possible purpose does a review of an era possess unless and until the subject’s lies, evasions and denials are exposed to full view?
Suppose that depends on one’s grandfather, doesn’t it?
But then again, given his political record, I wouldn’t think Howard was morally superior to anyone, except perhaps Tony Abbott.
As for the lack of women writers, I’d see that as more of a compliment to those women, if any were asked, who said no.
I seem to recall John Howard wondered why more books had not been written by conservatives. This soon to be remaindered volume suggests an answer to this question.
Sadly, I analysed ABC’s The Drum contributions at the end of Jonathan Green’s tenure and he had, discounting the work of staff writers like Annabel, published four to one in favour of male authors. So the Left has a long way to go as well.
The grandfather remark is a reminder of irony of what so called “conservatives” have become. Once upon a time conservatives were those that wanted to preserve what was good in the past. Now “conservatives” belong to the feral right that wants to pull down what was good in the past. They have more in common with Stalin than Frazer.
These days the true conservatives are the Greens. Hopefully the real conservatives who vote LNP might come to realize this.
It struck me that Howard used the singular of grandfather. Does this mean that he was ignoring his maternal grandfather?
As for myself,I wouldn’t even dream of speculating on wether I was superior to my grandfathers.And I could cry ,now, how they are not significant figures to outdo the Howard mirage of himself.The bloody disgusting insult of a cretin.
Actually, you’re on to something here, Paul, and it’s more than just institutional-sexism-in-pop-up-book-form; how does a Family First honcho like Bob Day get an invite over more reliable Howardian social scold allies like Devine, Shanahan, Arndt? FF played a pivotal role in repealing WorkChoices, after all.
Also, Tom Switzer has turned anti-Iraq-War. Wonder what they have him doing there.
There may be one or two other fairweather friends in that all-male lineup, ready to use this cachet to turn around and do some extra bad doublethink if given half a chance.
This may actually be a publication they haven’t properly thought through, and will want to bury in a couple of months time, you know.
Gentlefolk:
Why is it that whenever I hear John Howard the politician being mentioned, I automatically think of Portugal’s Salazar? They didn’t speak the same language or have the same religion; there must be some reasons, I’m sure.
Thanks for your link @ 4, Katz. It is hypocritical for this wretch to condemn former U.S. Defense Secretary MacNamara for changing his mind when he himself, the wonderful anti-communist, did a complete about-face and harmed those Australians who actually risked their lives fighting well-armed and well-trained and well-led Communist troops …. or does he deny being a Treasurer and a decision maker in Fraser’s Cabinet perhaps?
John D @ 8:
My oath!
We can’t call them ‘conservatives’ any more and ‘Tories’ is too benign a term, besides, Tories usually have some sort of consistent ideology …. so, what do we call these randomly destructive marionettes?
Luxxe @ 7:
That’s disgraceful. It implies the lefties do a lot of yapping about exalting women but when it comes to practical application, they still reckon that shielas can’t think for themselves. That makes them no better than Right extremists.
Heck, even the boagans they are so fond of sneering at are far more accepting of women’s ideas and opinions.
Nickws, they won’t need to bury it. I can’t see it doing as well as, say, Andrew Jones’ autobiography (last seen on the remaindered table at Mary Martin’s bookshop in 1970).
Nickws and David Irvine the real one):
Oh no, they won’t bury this publication at all – no way.
The Faithful-&-Deceived will be under social pressure to have this – and ‘Lazarus In A Flat Spin’ – on display in their homes, mostly unread or unopened or even detested, as a visible sign of their of their unquestioning loyalty. (Gee, why do I keep thinking of Salazar every time somebody mentions Emperor George II The Loser’s trans-Pacific local acting deputy-sheriff?)
So what was wrong with the BLF. ?…Did Norm Gallagah use a tad too much muscle on the bosses, rather than the “splash of perfume” more in keeping with the middle-class country club members that currently passes as “political commentry for working-class consumption”?
Good people:
Would I be thought nasty if I called J.W.Howard …. Mr Six Degrees …. as a tribute to his fantastic leadership, for over a decade, in striving to prevent a massive environmental disaster (perhaps even a mass extinction)? No?
Funny this should come up. My mother recently gave me a little medal in a hinged box – my Grandfather’s Dux of the School medal from the beginning of the last century. His dad was the gardener of a country estate (no Lady Chatterley jokes please) and he went to a “dame school”. He went on to be a professor of astronomy. I admire him very much and I’m not a Conservative, sorry JWH.
Under Christopher Pyne’s rule, kids from humble backgrounds will find it increasingly hard to experience the social mobility that my grandfather did, even in the early 1900s.
Jaycee – the BLF saved numerous heritage buildings from the wreckers with their “green bans” and you know how terrible “greenies” and people who stand in the way of freeways and apartment boxes are.
Of course it’s important to remember the distinction between the NSW BLF of Green Bans fame led by Jack Mundey, Joe Owens and Bob Pringle, and the Federal, NSW and Victorian BLF led by Maoist Norm Gallagher and his associates. The former was destroyed with the connivance of the latter.
Paul, the other difference is that Jack Mundey wasn’t corrupt.