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Absolutely Revolting

December 2014, no. 367

Welcome to our December issue! Highlights include our popular Books of the Year feature in which leading critics, writers, and artists nominate their favourite books (providing plenty of inspiration for your summer reading lists). Also, Neal Blewett reviews Julia Gillard’s memoir of her time as prime minister; Diana Glenn reviews Clive James’s translation of The Divine Comedy; Ann-Marie Priest dives into a new collection of Gwen Harwood’s poetry; Phillip Deery reviews David Horner’s history of ASIO’s formative years; and Delia Falconer reviews Robert Dessaix’s memoir What Days Are For. Dessaix is also this month’s Open Page guest and Gig Ryan is our Poet of the Month. New poems by Gig Ryan, Tina Kane, and Stephen Edgar can also be found within.

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Contents Category: Books of the Year
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Books of the Year is always one our most popular features. Find out what our 41 contributors liked most this year – and why.
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Robert Adamson

Where Song Began - colour

Tim Low’s Where Song Began: Australia’s Birds and How They Changed the World (Penguin, reviewed in ABR, 11/14) is a book where science and natural history blend with rare clarity. Low makes what seems, at first, an extraordinary claim: that Australian birds created the first song – however, the book is convincing. On closing this stunning volume I wondered about the influence of birds on the first human song. Samuel Wagan Watson’s Love Poems and Death Threats (UQP) is a great collection from a poet ‘mapping the songlines’: inventive, satirical, tender. David Malouf’s Earth Hour (UQP, 3/14) is poetry of mastery and clear-eyed praise, a book to read now and into the future. The Unspeak Poems and Other Verses (Walleah Press, 10/14) is one of Tim Thorne’s most impressive volumes – technically brilliant, politically engaged poetry. Petra White’s A Hunger (John Leonard Press) collects White’s previous volumes along with an exciting section of new poems with depth and bite.

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Colin Golvan reviews Excursions in the Law by Peter Heerey
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What’s on a judge’s mind? Litigants and advocates would love to know. Former judge Peter Heerey answers that question in his latest book, a compendium of writing over many years, covering a vast array of topics and in myriad forms.
Book 1 Title: Excursions in the Law
Book Author: Peter Heerey
Book 1 Biblio: Desert Pea Press, $59.95 hb, 282 pp
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What’s on a judge’s mind? Litigants and advocates would love to know. Former judge Peter Heerey answers that question in his latest book, a compendium of writing over many years, covering a vast array of topics and in myriad forms.

Heerey displays his abiding affection for his Tasmanian roots with an essay on the Tasmanian member of the group of authors of the Australian Constitution, Andrew Inglis Clark. He then shifts into high gear with commentary on the famous case of Professor Orr of the University of Tasmania, who was sacked for having a sexual relationship with an eighteen-year-old student. Orr challenged the dismissal. His case, somewhat amazingly, ended up in the High Court, which dismissed his appeal.

Read more: Colin Golvan reviews 'Excursions in the Law' by Peter Heerey

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Contents Category: Features
Custom Article Title: Coetzee Colloquium
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Few authors summon the various modes of irony to better purpose than J.M. Coetzee. Typically, before Coetzee gives a reading, the audience can safely suppose that they are in for a good laugh, the odd squirm and cringe, and at least one moment of bewilderment. But there are exceptions to this general rule, and the several hundred people who gathered to hear Coetzee read last week, on a balmy Tuesday evening in Adelaide, were fortunate to witness an atypical performance by the Nobel laureate.
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Few authors summon the various modes of irony to better purpose than J.M. Coetzee. Typically, before Coetzee gives a reading, the audience can safely suppose that they are in for a good laugh, the odd squirm and cringe, and at least one moment of bewilderment. But there are exceptions to this general rule, and the several hundred people who gathered to hear Coetzee read last week, on a balmy Tuesday evening in Adelaide, were fortunate to witness an atypical performance by the Nobel laureate.

Read more: Letter from Adelaide | Shannon Burns on the Coetzee Colloquium

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Rodney Tiffen reviews Hack Attack: How the truth caught up with Rupert Murdoch by Nick Davies and Beyond Contempt: The inside story of the phone hacking trial by Peter Jukes
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Bettina Jordan-Barber will soon face trial for receiving around £100,000 over nine years from the Sun newspaper for supplying information while she was an official in the Ministry of Defence. Both the prosecution and the defence during the recent UK ‘phone hacking’ trial accepted that the payments had been made, and that Rebekah Brooks, while she was editor of the Sun from 2003 to 2006, authorised eleven of them totalling £38,000. According to Brooks, it never occurred to her that the person her reporter, who will also soon face trial, referred to in his emails as his ‘number one military contact’ and ‘ace military source’ might be someone in the military. The jury accepted this profession of ignorance, so Brooks was found not guilty of ‘conspiracy to commit misconduct in public office’.
Book 1 Title: Hack Attack
Book 1 Subtitle: How the truth caught up with Rupert Murdoch
Book Author: Nick Davies
Book 1 Biblio: Chatto & Windus, $34.99 pb, 447 pp
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Book 2 Title: Beyond Contempt
Book 2 Subtitle: The inside story of the phone hacking trial
Book 2 Author: Peter Jukes
Book 2 Biblio: Canbury Press, £25 pb, 249 pp
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Bettina Jordan-Barber will soon face trial for receiving around £100,000 over nine years from the Sun newspaper for supplying information while she was an official in the Ministry of Defence. Both the prosecution and the defence during the recent UK ‘phone hacking’ trial accepted that the payments had been made, and that Rebekah Brooks, while she was editor of the Sun from 2003 to 2006, authorised eleven of them totalling £38,000. According to Brooks, it never occurred to her that the person her reporter, who will also soon face trial, referred to in his emails as his ‘number one military contact’ and ‘ace military source’ might be someone in the military. The jury accepted this profession of ignorance, so Brooks was found not guilty of ‘conspiracy to commit misconduct in public office’.

Read more: Rodney Tiffen reviews 'Hack Attack: How the truth caught up with Rupert Murdoch' by Nick Davies...

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Phillip Deery reviews The Spy Catchers: The official history of ASIO 1949–1963, Volume One by David Horner
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Article Title: An ‘unfettered’ account of ASIO’s early years
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In the interests of national security, my luggage was recently searched at Los Angeles airport. The culprit: Spy Catchers. The uncorrected proof copy was so bulky that it triggered an alert. I declined to tell the Customs and Border Protection officer (in no mood for irony) that one chapter in the offending item was entitled ‘Keeping out Undesirables’. David Horner’s first volume in the history of ASIO is a big book – big on detail, broad in scope, and, overall, impressive in achievement.
Book 1 Title: The Spy Catchers
Book 1 Subtitle: The official history of ASIO 1949–1963, Volume One
Book Author: David Horner
Book 1 Biblio: Allen & Unwin, $59.95 hb, 736 pp
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In the interests of national security, my luggage was recently searched at Los Angeles airport. The culprit: Spy Catchers. The uncorrected proof copy was so bulky that it triggered an alert. I declined to tell the Customs and Border Protection officer (in no mood for irony) that one chapter in the offending item was entitled ‘Keeping out Undesirables’. David Horner’s first volume in the history of ASIO is a big book – big on detail, broad in scope, and, overall, impressive in achievement.

The original raison d’être of ASIO was to catch spies, hence the book’s title. It is now common knowledge that Prime Minister Ben Chifley established ASIO not to combat domestic communism but to satisfy American and British security concerns. This was after the ultra-secret Venona decrypts revealed the existence of a Soviet spy ring, the ‘Klod’ network, operating in Australia. Indeed, much of this story has already been told by Horner and Des Ball in Breaking the Codes: Australia’s KGB Network, 1944–1950 (1998). But ASIO’s counter-espionage function was soon joined by a counter-subversion function. Targeted were the Communist Party of Australia (CPA), front organisations, and fellow travellers. Examining and evaluating how ASIO fulfilled these dual roles, which frequently overtaxed the resources and expertise of the young security service, forms the core of Horner’s narrative.

Read more: Phillip Deery reviews 'The Spy Catchers: The official history of ASIO 1949–1963, Volume One' by...

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