175: UNAUSTRALIAN BEHAVIOUR
ISBN 0 9750837 2 4
WINTER 2004

WHO AMONG US today is ‘un-Australian’? “The great political achievement of the Howard Government”, says NATHAN HOLLIER in the issue’s editorial, “has been to redefine Australia as a monoculture”. In this issue TONY BIRCH writes of the spectacle of white politicians questioning the ‘Australianness’ of Aboriginal rioters in Redfern. MARIA TUMARKIN notes a disturbing contrast between the growing reverence toward war-memorial ‘sacred sites’ and a lack of respect for their Aboriginal counterparts. ROLF HEIMANN visits China and counters Australian misperceptions. OUYANG YU suggests that Chinese-Australian intellectuals are excluded from the Australian public sphere. DAWN COHEN argues that anti-semitism in Australia goes unrecognised, even by the political Left. JUDITH SACKVILLE-O’DONNELL reveals that Bryce Courtenay, in writing about a Jewish figure of Australia’s past, ignored the evidence and produced a “grotesque Jewish caricature”. LAURIE CLANCY finds that Peter Carey has sanitised and ultimately romanticised the story of Ned Kelly. CHEK LING finds many Chinese-Australians, eager to gain acceptance, have forgotten their own history of oppression. PETER HOLDING documents the ways the history of the Australian military involvement in Iraq is being re-written, so that white Australia can ask ‘why weren’t we told?’. KATHERINE WILSON reveals that truth often runs a poor second to business and government spin in the media coverage of the GM issue.