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BYRON BAY

Byron Bay Writers' Festival
Keeping the discourse alive: the work of the literary magazine
Friday 6 August, 10.15am
In conversation with Phillip Edmonds, Ben Naparstek and Julianne Schultz. Chair: Moya Costello ...more

Byron Bay Writers' Festival:
In Conversation: The life and death of democracy
Saturday 7 August, 2pm
In conversation with John Keane with Julianne Schultz ...more

BRISBANE

Prosper or Perish: A forum on the contributions and challenges of immigration

Prosper or Perish? Social Capital
11am – 12.30pm
Roof Terrace, Brisbane Powerhouse

Prosper or Perish? Cultural Capital
1pm – 2.30pm
Roof Terrace, Brisbane Powerhouse

Griffith REVIEW, The Brisbane Institute and Embiggen Books present two fascinating forums on how immigration and population growth are transforming Brisbane and Australian culture.

Please join us on Sunday 8 August at The Powerhouse for one or both panels ...more

Griffith REVIEW Audio

Julianne Schultz: Foundation for the Artist on ABC Radio NationalJulianne Schultz

How well do we look after our artists? This was one of the big questions coming out of the Prime Minister's 2020 Summit in 2008, and just this week a proposal for far-reaching change in arts funding was handed to the Arts Minister.

Michael Shirrefs spoke to Julianne about the questions that prompted the proposal.

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Listen to the podcast HERE.

Edition 28: Still the Lucky Country? on
ABC Radio

Marcia LangtonIndigenous academic and Griffith REVIEW author Marcia Langton, on who really benefits from the resources boom and what it means for those living in mining provinces – including Indigenous people.
Will a resources tax help distribute mining wealth more evenly across the nation?

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Listen to the podcast HERE.

Kathy MarksKathy Marks discusses the cultural impact of mining, the impact on the environment and how the mining giants liaise with Aboriginal landholders on ABC Rural's 'Bush Telegraph' radio programme with host Michael Cathcart.

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Listen to the podcast HERE.

Jonathan West Jonathan West says that his hand was all but shaking when he came to write his essay. It wasn't an all-revealing memoir or confession, but something just as outlandish, at least for political leaders and economists..

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Listen to the podcast HERE.
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Edition 29: Prosper or Perish

open_quote.jpgIt is estimated that Australia's population will reach 35 million by 2050. This will put stress on cities, social cohesion and fragile ecosystems. close_quote.jpg

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Even for a country built on immigration, the continuing high rates of population growth are testing the consensus of national identity and demand a visionary approach to imagine a very different future, with a bigger, older population in a world that is bursting at the seams.

A major essay by award winning author and ABC presenter of The National Interest, Peter Mares explores the tensions between a humanitarian and an environmental approach to migration and population, with a look at the emergence of an anti-growth movement and political party and an evaluation of how we measure economic growth and quality of life.

The pressure of how to strike the right balance between environmental preservation, cultural diversity and a robust economy will make population and immigration policies a significant factor in this year's federal election.

Prosper or Perish explores the limits to growth, what's at stake in getting the mix right, and reports on the realities for a new generation of global citizens whose work, lives and relationships stretch across borders and blend traditional identities.

Other writers include Tom Griffiths, Sara Dowse, Kathy Marks, Brendan Gleeson, Michele Grossman, Raymond Evans, Tone Wheeler, Anna Maria Dell'oso, James Spigelman
PLUS more memoir, reportage and essays; new fiction by David Sornig, Paddy O'Reilly and Lee Kofman.

 

>> Go to Edition 29: Prosper or Perish.

» Featured authors

Peter MaresPeter Mares –
a land of plenty, or plenty in the land?
Monday morning
in Mernda

Anna Maria Dell'osoAnna Maria Dell'oso reports on rebuilding lives, word by word in O Maker of Distances

Raymond EvansRaymond Evans writes of a journey from South Wales to  Brisbane in
Bardon, 1949

Sara DowseSara Dowse
writes on bureaucracy on the high seas in her memoir Crossings

Tom GriffithsTom Griffiths writes on science, people, climate change in
A humanist on
thin ice

Kathy MarksKathy Marks –
a recipe for Australian multiculturalism Mixing it up in Bennelong

» Online Only articles from Edition 29
Tony Barrell
Tony Barrell A chance meeting of two Australian immigrants in a Greek deli creates a shared sense of connection.
No going back
Ryan Heath
Ryan Heath writes on personal freedom and belonging in his essay
Love in a cold climate
David Ritter
David Ritter Linking Australia's prosperity to the world-wide growth of urban slums in his essay.
Continent without slums
Deborah Singerman
Deborah Singerman writes about maintaining human connections in tomorrow's cities in her memoir
The biggest journey


» Featured essay from Edition 29

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The greatest spoiler

An essay by Brendan Gleeson

“ Australia's development history is, as the historian
Geoffrey Bolton describes it, a tale of spoils and spoilers. White settlers unleashed a rough-handed growth model
that saw the land as an enemy to be vanquished. Its
original owners were no more than troublesome fauna.

Development necessitated that they be contained and, if necessary, culled. Raymond Evans’ history of Queensland details the murderous work of the Native Police. Adults
and children were shot down and babies ‘brained’ – held upside down by the ankles and clubbed on their heads
until dead.

Tony Roberts relates the same tale of slaughter in the Gulf Country, estimating that as many as eight hundred men, women and children and babies were killed before 1910. These are mere windows into a house of horrors.

None of this was as insane as it now appears.
Development was lethal but logical – and closely
sanctioned. The murderers were almost never held to account. And despoliation was praised, not condemned.
This was development at work: muscular, sweaty, bloody,
but necessary. The savage clearances of bush, fauna and native peoples were the pointy end of the process of
naming, containing and civilising the land, rendering it productive and profitable.

The first work was to make secure and potent the urban bases of the new colonies. Great spaces were then
cleared and claimed for pastoralism. Mining followed, eventually catching up with agriculture.

In the cities, the ‘development game’ has been our
national code. From the earliest times developers joined
civic purpose to venal interest. The aptly named Thomas
Bent (1838-1909), twenty-second Premier of Victoria, was emblematic.

In a long corrupt innings Bent played skilfully and
unlawfully. But he knew the rules of the game. As the
Minister of Railways he approved a tramline that ran past
his properties and thus inflated their worth.

In the century following, the tradition of public office for private gain was steadfastly observed. Max Gillies’
caricature of Russ Hinze (1919-91), Queensland’s Minister
for Everything – including, simultaneously, the portfolios
of racing and liquor licensing – put it best. ‘In Queensland
we don’t have conflicts of interests, only [gloating chuckle] convergences of interest,’ Gillies’ Hinze declared, and the
fat man would have agreed: joined-up policy, Queensland style. ”

…read the complete essay
 

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Next Edition

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Griffith REVIEW's second annual fiction collection will focus on the Pacific region: from the Americas to Asia, the Pacific islands, New Zealand and Australia. What binds us? What pulls us apart?

>> More on Edition 30

From the Archives

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Beyond pity

In his essay from Edition 15: Divided Nation, Robert Hillman learns from two brilliant refugees that migration is mutually beneficial.

‘Sitting hunched over the table, Zarah kept her voice low, and folded and refolded the straw of her Coke into a compact wad. She spoke with astonishing candour of her involvement in reform politics at Tehran University, where she was no longer permitted to study; of imprisonment, torture, severe sexual abuse.'

‘Najaf's journey to Australia began in the northern Afghan city of Mazare-Sharif in March 2001, a few months before his Timor Sea voyage. By the age of thirty-one, he had survived a rocket attack on his house by the mujahideen forces opposing the Russian invasion of his country, casual, indiscriminate shelling by the Russians themselves, and a relentless Taliban vendetta against his tribe, the Hazara. He had witnessed the last few seconds of his younger brother Rosal's life and the death of a beloved older brother, felled one quiet day by a single shot as he was gathering honey from the family's beehives.’

... More on Edition 15:
Divided Nation

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