Tuesday, 15 May 2001
Friday, 11 May 2001
Writer awarded for visceral story of hope, The Australian, 11 May, 2001.
Writer awarded for visceral story of hope: [1 Edition]
Stapleton, John. The Australian; Canberra, A.C.T. [Canberra, A.C.T] 11 May 2001: 2.
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Yesterday she was awarded one of the country's most prestigious accolades for women writers, The Kibble Award, with an accompanying $20,000 prize. [Inga Clendinnen] is most famous for her scholarly work, notably Reading the Holocaust, which in 1999 was named Best Book of the Year by The New York Times.
Clendinnen has a formidable reputation as an academic historian, with her work on the Aztecs and Maya receiving international recognition. Tiger's Eye: A Memoir is entirely different.
A LIVER transplant might not sound like the most promising or inspirational start for a book.
But in the hands of Inga Clendinnen, her experiences struggling with liver disease have been transformed into a hymn of hope called Tiger's Eye: A Memoir.
Yesterday she was awarded one of the country's most prestigious accolades for women writers, The Kibble Award, with an accompanying $20,000 prize. Clendinnen is most famous for her scholarly work, notably Reading the Holocaust, which in 1999 was named Best Book of the Year by The New York Times.
Far from being an inaccessible academic, Clendinnen presents as both charming and personable, a 66-year-old grandmother who has been married for almost half a century.
On winning a prize that only women can enter, she says she normally prefers open competition, but in the category for which theKibble Prize is dedicated, life writing, she believes it is vital that women's work be encouraged.
"Women's life writing is about the moral economy of domestic life, of ordinary life, and we have particular problems having attention paid to that," she said.
"We don't have much access to the experiences that life writing focuses on, not because it is trivial but because it is the ... crucial underpinning of much grander events."
Clendinnen has a formidable reputation as an academic historian, with her work on the Aztecs and Maya receiving international recognition. Tiger's Eye: A Memoir is entirely different.
She says that having lived an active and purposeful academic life, losing control in hospital had been alarming.
"With chronic liver disease, you lose vocabulary, you lose memory," she says.
Judges of the Kibble Award described the book as "one of the most unusual memoirs to appear in recent years".
Illustration
Caption: Garden of life:Picture: Chris Pavlich; Photo: Photo
Men and the Media, Dads On The Air, 2001.
http://www.dadsontheair.com.au/menandthemedia/
Men and the Media - John Stapleton
The Sunday Tasmanian has nowhere near the clout or the distribution of mainland papers like The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald, the east coast Sunday papers or The Australian. Yet it is the only newspaper in the country which has reported that the male suicide rate in Australia is now at its highest since the Depression. The paper puffed the story on its front page last October under the headline "If Men Were Whales" and a full front page picture of a group of men marooned on a sand bank.
It began: "More than 40 Australian men commit suicide each week. If men were whales, this would cause community outcry and public mourning." The accompanying inside story, the best compilation of male suicide statistics published in Australia so far, showed that more men suicided in the last decade than died in World War II, and the male suicide rate in a single year is four times that of the total number killed in the Vietnam conflict.
The entire mainland press was creamed on what is a fundamentally important social story. Why? It's not a lack of interest.
Reporter Simon Bevilacqua says: "We had an amazing amount of feedback from people working in the industry, like nothing else, from left, right and centre, from the federal government to people in the industry. There were a lot of people pleased the issue was raised." Managing Director of media monitors Rehame Australia Peter Maher said there was a distinct increase in the reporting of men's issues and the Family Court throughout 2000. He said "huggy stories" about men wanting to spend more time with their children ran all year with coverage of family law reform peaking in December after the introduction of new jailing provisions into the family law. The government's big push for men in the last year was the Men and Relationships Conference, organised by the Office of the Status of Women.
Not one newspaper in the country seemed to think it odd that hundreds of thousands of dollars of public funds was spent flying 300 public servants and domestic violence experts from around the country to a very comfortable hotel in Sydney for a two-day male bashing exercise of the "all men are violent" type. Not one newspaper raised the point that numerous reputable domestic violence studies show both men and women are equally guilty of domestic violence. , or that the Office of the Status of Women had been previously caught out making exaggerated claims about domestic violence. Nor did anyone seem to think it odd that there had been no invitations to a men's conference issued to anyone from the broad spectrum of men's groups to speak and which clearly failed to address any issues that actually concern men.
Indeed Adele Horin of the Sydney Morning Herald, told a million or so readers: "Hardly a single 'angry dad' could be sighted at the Men and Relationships conference the Federal Government put on in Sydney this week. It was a civilised, hand-picked gathering. New Age men. New Age women. About 300 in all hopping from workshops on domestic violence, to workshops on men's post-separation services. It was a festival of enlightenment... those incendiary words 'Family Court' and 'child support' were barely uttered."
Why should the disenfranchisement of men's concerns be such a source of delight? In reality this was a "festival of enlightment" most men would have preferred these people held on their own time and at their own expense.
The Coalition's major effort to review the troubled family law domain has also ignored half of the population. The Family Pathways Advisory Group, chaired by a former head of the NSW Dept of Community Services and consisting almost entirely of feminist advocacy groups, feminist academics or industry insiders, has not a single representative of men's groups. That any findings by such an unrepresentative group will lack legitimacy does not appear to bother the government a jot. Their answer to criticisms of the make-up of the group has been that the Attorney General has confidence in its members. He might. Half the population doesn't.
No newspaper has commented on this.
In haste the Federal Coalition Government, which paints itself as standing for family values and probity in public life, has just passed legislation jailing parents who defy Family Court orders. Both The Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian, without speaking to those involved, incorrectly reported that men's groups supported the legislation. In fact jailing is opposed by most men's and women's groups, neither of whom were consulted. Men's groups in particular are opposed, seeing the jailing of former wives as inappropriate and fearing the laws will be mostly used to jail fathers. There have been a number of appalling stories in the international media over the past year on the consequences of these types of laws: a man in the US jailed for three months for ringing his daughter on Monday and not Sunday suicided within hours of being released; a bus conductor in Britain was jailed for waving at his children out the window of a bus.
In Australia an Indian man was jailed for writing to his parents in English, not Hindi. The Family Court was not satisfied he was attempting to comply with their orders. His efforts to point out that his father had two masters degrees in English fell on deaf ears. The story received extensive coverage in the ethnic press, but not a word in the mainstream.
The Family Court has ordered outraged litigants not to contact the United Nations over their concerns about the court's conduct. It all began a long time ago. Most of those now in senior positions within the media and in government were in or around universities in the 1970s. Many have not altered their views much since then. It was at a time when Germaine Greer and The Female Eunich was at the cutting edge of social commentary, when Shulamith Firestone's The Dialects of Sex was course reading in Philosophy 1, 2 and 3; when women's courses were just beginning.
It was a time when family courts were being founded throughout the western world.
What was once the cutting edge, widely supported by many men, became in its playing out in family courts, social welfare departments, domestic violence shelters and all the hundreds of millions of dollars worth of supporting bureaucries, a shock to many of its original male supporters.
Fathers have been consistently demonised for more than 20 yearswith relentless anti-male propaganda which has in classic Marxist language painting the family as patriarchal nests of violence and abuse. Studies which have consistently shown children to be better off in all ways in intact families or with their fathers have been studiously ignored.
In the universities where it all began, the bias against men both in terms of courses and behaviour continues. At the University of NSW a men's issue of Tharunka was squashed by the Guild Council last year. It condemned "any proposal to produce a men's edition or white heterosexual male edition of Tharunka. Accordingly, Guild Council directs the media directors/Tharunka editors not to produce any such editions or publish material which contravenes general guild policy or anti-discrimination legislation or which undermines the purpose of women's, lesbian/gay, indigenous or ethnic students departments." At the same time the Guild passed a proposal for a women's only edition. A string of stories from American campusses now attracting media attention make Helen Garner's The First Stone look like a picnic.
There has been scathing worldwide media attention focussing on family courts throughout the past year. The Observer newspaper in London just completed a three month expose into the British Family Court, concluding that custody evaluation procedures were utterly flawed. They found "a shocking culture producing routine misery on a vast scale for both children and parents". The paper continued: "We have found wide ranging inadequacies in the legal system, ill-trained professionals, badly prepared judges and decision making which is often a lottery."
No such investigation has ever been conducted in this country. For many years and to this day the blurring, if not total lack of separation, between women's affairs rounds and social affairs rounds on newspapers, radio and television has meant that the concerns of womens groups are put forward as newsworthy while the concerns of men and fathers are simply ignored. Many of these reporters are women. As American author of The Myth of Male Power Warren Farrell, who has written extensively the media's silence on men's issues and what he calls "the lace curtain" says, gender issues are regularly covered by feminists whose gender reinforces their political ideology... feminism achieved power informally, by becoming the one party system of gender politics: creating a new arena of study, defining the terms, generating the data and becoming the only acceptable source of interpretation."
In many of the opinion pages of Australian newspapers the words of the Women's Electoral Lobby or other sympathisers are paraded as the cutting edge of social commentary. The opposite view is virtually never put.
The so-called "sinister men's groups", to quote the Chief Justice of the Family Court, in reality nothing more than groups of people who want to see more of their kids, have long complained of the media bias against them.
Lone Fathers, Dads, Fathers Against Family Equity, Men's Rights and many other smaller groups have all struggled to get their views across against what they perceived as overwhelming odds. Outfunded more than 1000:1, they are no match for the public relations expertise of the womens groups. The media rarely bothers to consult them in any issues affecting families or single parents.
Over the years many family law reform campaigners have viewed the wall of silence arrayed against them as some kind of leftist conspiracy. Indeed, as professional surveys have shown, journalists tend to be left leaning partly by the nature of their work and the impulses which drove them to it. Like most people, they tend to want to leave the world a better place, and for some this has meant making a strike for the disadvantaged.
Women's groups have managed to define themselves as victims and to draft the entire debate of divorce and the position of single mothers into a left/right, progressive/conservative dichotomy. They have commandeered the much abused phrase "the best interests of children". The concerns of men and fathers have been dismissed in some bracket where according to them lie the rabid One Nation voting gun toting four wheel driving "send them back to kitchen" maniacs. But in the new millenium, when most men support their wives in their career choices, it is by no means clear that separated mothers are more disadvantaged than separated fathers. The media has never seriously tackled the most draconian censorship in the country, Clause 121 of the Family Law Act, which prohibits the identification of parties to a Family Court case. It makes coverage of family law issues almost impossible for television. People expressing their views on radio have taken to court purely on voice recognition. The secrecy laws have effectively shielded the Court and its decision making from any detailed public scrutiny. This protection spills over into the operations of children's courts, welfare departments such as DOCS in NSW and Human Services in Victoria as well as the family law units of Legal Aid.
No investigative journalist has ever questioned why if we are in fact in the midst of an epidemic of child sexual abuse as indicated by the number of "substantiations" by welfare officers, why there are so few convictions.
The legislation means that the agencies that intrude most into the private lives of individuals have evolved in secrecy. These agencies impact on the lives of millions of Australian adults and children, and will impact on them for generations to come. And yet no one questions or exposes the behaviour of lawyers in any of these jurisdictions, their agendas or their use of psychiatric evidence. It's just not politically correct to do so.
Imagine, for fun, how PM John Howard would appear in a family report by a Family Court counsellor on a mission from the Goddess! Journalists also rarely question the conduct of the protecting bureaucracies and heftily funded academics circling family law. The dictums of the Australian Institute of Family Studies, founded under the same legislation as the Family Court, are repeated as fact. Academics know better than anyone which side their grants are buttered on. The Institute has spent far more money on studies of social capital, an academic discourse devoted almost entirely to attempting to define itself, than it ever has in investigating the position of fathers after divorce. It has never properly investigated the high suicide rates of fathers and the linkages to family law. But there are signs of change.
Significantly, The Australian has run a number of stories and editorials critical of the Family Court. These were written by then High Court writer Bernard Lane. Lane relied closely on Australia Law Reform Commission's reports, whch found overwhelming disquiet with the court and its processes, as well as the questioning of senate committee member and former barrister Senator Mason, who asked a string of parliamentary questions on the travel budgets of senior judges and delays in the court. The court refused to answer a number of the questions.
But while the Family Court remains something of a sacred cow for most of the media, the same is not true of the Child Support Agency, which has received more hostile or mixed coverage over the past year than ever before.
The exception was The Daily Telegraph, which ran a series kicking off with a screaming headline "Child Cheaters" and a photograph of a father with a Porsche evading child support. It would have been just as easy to find a woman living high on the hog on income from the government, the ex, the latest rich boyfriend and her own business, but that was not to be. But even the Tele felt obliged to run a range of views in its followup stories and extracts of letters. The Canberra Times has broken a string of excellent stories on child support in the past few months; including running on its front page twice in the same week a story on the inquest into a 28 year old man with three children who suicided with a CSA letter in his hand. He was losing 80 per cent of his pay in tax and child support. The Agency claimed it was treating him fairly.
The Brisbane Courier Mail has just run a three part series on child support throwing up a range of moving stories. The Adelaide Advertiser has also just run an excellent piece called Fathers Fighting Back. With the government having just thrown jailing into the present toxic mix of family breakdown, media interest is unlikely to die off. The day when we have a National Council for Single Fathers as well as one for mothers, the day when shared parenting is the norm after separation, when destructive custody battles are a thing of the past and family courts are a long forgotten institution, is the day when we will be able to say we have truly made progress towards equality in all areas.
John Stapleton
Thursday, 10 May 2001
Gas blew Ribena off shop shelves, The Australian, 10 May, 2001
Gas blew Ribena off shop shelves: [1 Edition]
Stapleton, John. The Australian [Canberra, A.C.T] 10 May 2001: 3.
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SO what exactly has happened to all the Ribena? Supermarket shelves have been bare of the blackcurrant drink since supplies dried up in March and "Temporarily unavailable" stickers appeared where the bottles and packs used to be.
The shortage was sparked when GlaxoSmithKline altered the specifications for the drink, which is made by Cadbury-Schweppes with blackcurrants from New Zealand. The problem was that there had been yeast in the drink. GlaxoSmithKline spokesman Kevin Darke said it was an environmental issue that needed clarification.
SO what exactly has happened to all the Ribena? Supermarket shelves have been bare of the blackcurrant drink since supplies dried up in March and "Temporarily unavailable" stickers appeared where the bottles and packs used to be.
For the marketers GlaxoSmithKline it has meant millions of dollars of lost sales and lost market share. And supplies are not expected to resume until July or August.
The shortage was sparked when GlaxoSmithKline altered the specifications for the drink, which is made by Cadbury-Schweppes with blackcurrants from New Zealand. The problem was that there had been yeast in the drink. GlaxoSmithKline spokesman Kevin Darke said it was an environmental issue that needed clarification.
"This is not a sterile production process and from time to time it is possible that small amounts of yeast can find themselves in the product," he said. "This is not a safety issue. No out-of- specification product was ever put on to supermarket shelves.
"A high-yeast content can cause excessive gassing in some products and so we thought it best to review our manufacturing processes."
Cadbury-Schweppes spokeswoman Karina O'Meara said it had nothing to do with the quality of the finished product. "We have produced Ribena for more than eight years and have always met the company's finished product specifications," she said.
"We are hoping for a mutually satisfactory outcome shortly."
More than $300million worth of Ribena products are sold worldwide each year, with sales in Australia reaching $12.2million.
Before the production difficulties Ribena had 50 per cent of the market in blackcurrant drinks. Forecasts suggest this will drop to 38 per cent this financial year as a result of the difficulties.
The consumer help line number is 1800 028 533.
Monday, 7 May 2001
Reddy to roar on island advice, The Australian, 7 May, 2001.
Reddy to roar on island advice: [1 Edition]
John Stapleton AAP. The Australian; Canberra, A.C.T. [Canberra, A.C.T] 07 May 2001: 3.
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HELEN Reddy, one of Australia's most famous singing exports of the 1970s, is launching a new career: running a psychological counselling service on Norfolk Island.
The island paradise is used to famous residents, with author Colleen McCullough having lived there for 20 years. She is married to one of Reddy's cousins, Ric Robinson.
In her heyday, Reddy was a chart-topping performer and became an icon of the women's movement with I am Woman, Hear me Roar.
HELEN Reddy, one of Australia's most famous singing exports of the 1970s, is launching a new career: running a psychological counselling service on Norfolk Island.
Her hits include I Don't Know How to Love Him, Delta Dawn and the anthem I am Woman.
The island paradise is used to famous residents, with author Colleen McCullough having lived there for 20 years. She is married to one of Reddy's cousins, Ric Robinson.
Paradise or not, Reddy's services as a counsellor will be appreciated, according to some Norfolk locals.
"There are a lot of very unhappy people on the island, with marriage break-ups and alcoholism," one woman resident said. "Personal relationships can be very difficult. You can't just get in the car and drive -- you're stuck on an island. This is a like small country town and everyone knows everyone's business. You can't escape. A counselling service could benefit the island."
She said the death of a woman whose car had run over a cliff last week, and the trauma for locals who had to retrieve the body, was an example of where Reddy's services could be useful.
The 58-year-old singer, who continues to perform, has sold her home in Santa Monica, California, to prepare for a full-time move to Norfolk. She has been spending about half the year on the island.
In her heyday, Reddy was a chart-topping performer and became an icon of the women's movement with I am Woman, Hear me Roar.
She is studying hypnotherapy as part of a course to prepare for her new occupation.
"What does the island need?" she asked. "There are no psychological counselling services there.
"I will be qualified at the end of all this to deal with most of the problems people have -- ranging from nail-biting to insomnia to all of the little things."
Friday, 4 May 2001
Green care calms the butterflies fluttering over ridge development - RESIDENTIAL, The Australian, 4 May, 2001.
Green care calms the butteflies fluttering over ridge developments - RESIDENTIAL: [1 Edition]
Stapleton, John. The Australian [Canberra, A.C.T] 04 May 2001: 41.
Abstract
Adjoining the Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park on the edge of Wahroonga, one of Sydney's most expensive suburbs, land parcels of any size rarely become available here.
At the time it was virgin bush similar to the surrounding national park. The landscape, dotted with scribbly gums and red bloodwoods, banksias and bottlebrush, is typical of the sandstone country of the northern Sydney basin.
Situated along a ridge, it is one of the highest points in metropolitan Sydney. Its location means it is an important meeting and mating point for 20 different species of butterfly. An entomologist with the CSIRO, Dr Don Sands, was employed by the developers to ensure their continued survival. The trees on which they congregate and a number of rare plants have been preserved or replanted.
THE first time developer Michael Fornari saw the property now known as Grosvenor Ridge he was determined to buy.
Adjoining the Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park on the edge of Wahroonga, one of Sydney's most expensive suburbs, land parcels of any size rarely become available here.
Originally earmarked by the state Government for development as a school, the land was auctioned 1995.
At the time it was virgin bush similar to the surrounding national park. The landscape, dotted with scribbly gums and red bloodwoods, banksias and bottlebrush, is typical of the sandstone country of the northern Sydney basin.
"I stood at the edge of the old sandstone quarry beside the estate and was taken by the long views and the aspect," Mr Fornari says. "You can see 20 to 30 kilometres, all the way beyond the Hawkesbury River. It is an all-green view. We expect the people who buy will have an affinity or love of the Australian bush."
The purchase of the property was only the beginning of what was a "very, very difficult" development application for the $30 million Grosvenor Ridge.
Although council officers supported the creation of a medium- density housing estate, the often greener than green Ku-ring-gai councillors rejected the proposal.
It was finally approved by the NSW Land and Environment Court in 1998.
After all the controversy, the results are now there for everyone to see.
Of the 33 single and two-story courtyard homes 15 are now complete. Prices range from $590,000 to $735,000.
The council and Finori's company, Chanrich Properties, agreed that only native plants, preferably from the area, would be used throughout.
Situated along a ridge, it is one of the highest points in metropolitan Sydney. Its location means it is an important meeting and mating point for 20 different species of butterfly. An entomologist with the CSIRO, Dr Don Sands, was employed by the developers to ensure their continued survival. The trees on which they congregate and a number of rare plants have been preserved or replanted.
The butterflies do not cope well with concrete, and the local sandstone has been used extensively. Even the colour and texture of the ring road through the estate has been designed with the butterflies in mind.
Landscape architect Stuart Pittendrigh said many of the plantings of indigenous trees were purely to attract the butterflies. "Much of the thought on how we designed the landscaping was to encourage the complete return of the butterflies," he said. "The development got up because it was sound environmentally."
Also originally controversial was the fate of a cairn marking the site of the Cook Trig Station, established in 1883 as part of the early trigonometric survey of the northern regions of Sydney. This too has been maintained as a feature of the estate.
The unique style of the housing at Grosvenor Ridge comes directly from the experiences of the architect Roger Charlesworth, a Wahroonga local.
He says he sold his large house because he was sick of spending so much time looking after it, but promptly found there was nothing to buy that suited him or his wife.
Each house is different, but they all have in common expansive living areas, large bedrooms and interesting nooks. Many of the purchasers are expected to be empty nesters who, like the architect, have become tired maintaining the large mansions that characterise the area.
Thus the houses Charlesworth has designed are capable of supporting not just a couple but have plenty of room for visiting grandchildren -- or adult children who want come back to stay. "You never know what's going to happen," says Mr Charlesworth, reflecting the experience of many a parent.
Also reflecting his own taste and needs, the houses all have studies, sometimes two.
"The people in this area don't want to live in townhouses or flats," he says. "Friends of ours who have gone to live at the Toaster at Circular Quay, or in units, wonder where to put their furniture, much less the kids when they come to stay."
Illustration
Caption: City and country:; Photo: Photo
Thursday, 3 May 2001
Packer is rushed back to hospital, The Australian, 3 May, 2001.
Packer is rushed back to hospital: [1 Edition]
John Stapleton, Martin Chulov. The Australian; Canberra, A.C.T. [Canberra, A.C.T] 03 May 2001: 3.
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Mr Packer, 62, underwent a kidney transplant at the hospital on November 22 last year after a kidney was donated by his long-time friend and helicopter pilot, Nick Ross.
KERRY Packer was in hospital last night after falling ill at lunchtime. It is understood he was taken to the dialysis ward at Sydney's Royal Prince Alfred Hospital by ambulance.
Mr Packer, 62, underwent a kidney transplant at the hospital on November 22 last year after a kidney was donated by his long-time friend and helicopter pilot, Nick Ross.
Since then Mr Packer has been in and out of hospital for what have been described as routine follow-ups.
His daughter, Gretel, visited him in hospital last night.
Sources said he was feeling "chipper" yesterday afternoon and sitting up in bed.
The hospital declined to comment last night, as did James Packer's office at the family's listed company, Publishing & Broadcasting Ltd. "There isn't any comment," a spokeswoman said.
Mr Packer has been plagued by health problems. He had one kidney removed because of cancer in 1989 and a year later suffered a heart attack. He was told about 2 1/2 years ago his remaining kidney was failing.
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