The Digger No.13 February 1973

T h e‘D ru g Problem ’: politics,high finance and m yth A Sydney researcher on the ideology of the national and international drug trade. B y R o b in Winkler, page 4

ISSUE NO. 13 FEBRUARY 24 - MARCH 10 1973 30 CENTS

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W hy w ould the U S consul open h is house to prospective b u y ers.. .w hen he’s not selling?

And why would the boss of GMH be selling his Ford Capri through the classified pages o f the M elbourne Age? And w hat would Sir Jam es Forrest, Melbourne boss of the Chase M anhattan Bank, w ant w ith six dozen nappies, hom e delivered?

Underground activists are em barked on a harassm ent campaign, directed at Australian agents o f US corporations. See page 3

K ickin g the porn~can for political p ro fit NSW Premier R obert (ne Robin) Askin and his chief secretary G riffiths have used it - now V ictorian Chief Secretary Meagher is using it in an attem p t to knock o ff his boss, Prem ier Dick Hamer. It’s the old pornography-as-m oral-degrader barrel. See page 1

Victorians parody o f law and order ~the state police force A review of Peggy Berman’s libel-studded book, a scenario o f graft and kick-back running V ictoria’s pow er machine.

A bortion, as Ms Berman says, was n o t the guts of the ongoing Fuss; the issue was, and still is, corruption a t the top. See page 5

Published by Hightim es Pry Ltd, 58 Canterbury Rood, M iddle Park, 3206. Printed by Peelprint, Queen sherry and Peel Streets, Melbourne.

BLANK PAGE FOR ISSUU VERSION ONLY

Page 1

Meagher's stereotypical prudery;

Aid Foe Indochina

72 tons of porn for a go at the top

Viet peace offensive With the Vietnam cease-fire, scores of international and national organizations are preparing to send help to rebuild Indochina.

Olaf Strah (pronounced Strow), who’s co-ordinating aid for the International Red Cross (IRC), says the biggest problem will be in co­ ordinating the various agencies working in Indochina. Because South Vietnamese President Thieu has forbidden refugees from return­ ing to homes in the Provisional Revolutionary Government areas, the Red Cross leader says the first task the Red Cross will undertake will be the return of refugees.

The IRC is planning the greatest aid campaign since the end of World War H. So far, $10 millions of aid is ready to cover the first three months after the cease-fire.

Other organizations sending aid to Indochina include thé United Nations’ Children’s Emergency Fund — UNICEF — and the World Council of Churches. The World

by Adrian MacIntyre

Are there any votes in prudery? Sir R obert Askin obviously th o u g h t so. The DLP did th eir very best to find them . N ow V ictoria’s R ay Meagher finally thinks h e ’s got them . If his cal­ culations are accurate, R ay Meagher is a b o u t to h it his very own jack p o t — th e Prem iership of Victoria. This is w hat th e stake is in V ictoria’s b attle o f the p o m .

Vice Squad raids have netted 72 tons of books, worth $1 million, in the past three weeks in Melbourne.

More than a quarter of a million “sex picture books” are currently in stor­ age in a warehouse in Wellington Street, Collingwood.

In the battle over pornography there are many simple moral puri­ tans — the True Believers fighting a crusade. Not so Ray Meagher (pronounced Maher but known as Meagre amongst Victorian political reporters).

A series of press conferences have clearly revealed Meagher as a stereo­ type' prude. One conference in particular reached the airy heights of Sir Arthur Rylah and his teenage daughter. It followed a day of talks with fellow-prude, NSW Chief Secretary Griffiths.

When the two political leaders arrived at the television room in the State Offices the large assemblage of television and press reporters immediately asked that some of the evil stuff should be produced for display. A secretary was despatched post haste to return with a large envelope full of the selected material.

At the conference Ray system­ atically showed to the pressmen all his wares and revealed some of his homespun philosophy. Pom must go because, “it degrades the human spirit to its lowest level — the animalistic.” On the one hand he claimed he couldn’t understand why anyone would want to read “ this stuff.” On the other he said it was a real threat to society because just look at history — at Roman times — when great civilizations tumbled because they became obsessed by “this sort of stuff.”

So while he can’t understand anyone wanting to read it, he never­ theless believes deep down in all of us there is some animal instinct which craves it.

A third approach is that normal people are not interested, but some poor unfortunates who are not as well off as us are. He uses this approach to explain the connection between pornography and crime. “ A lot of academics have done studies on this, but none of it proves a thing.

“There is one study that proves it for me. In America they asked 27 police chiefs whether they saw any connection between pornography and major juvenile crime. 26 of them said there was a 100% connection.

They said every time they went to the homes of these kids they always found this sort of stuff lying about.

And the other police chief said no, this wasn’t the case all the time — only 90% of the time. Well that’s good enough evidence for me. I mean practical people like these policemen who are really confronted with the problem — well they’re the sort of people who would know — not these academics.”

Changing face of maternalism After reading Helen Gamer’s article on unmarried mothers’ “homes” , I find it difficult to re­ concile the conditions and attitudes described with my own experience of ten years ago.

The place I stayed at wâs in Sydney — approximately 30-girls at a time and no babies. There was a staff of two nursing sisters. Neither wore a, uniform and both ate and watched TV with us. Probably no­ body worked more than three hours a day, and for the last two weeks we did nothing more arduous than dusting or table setting.

We did not have our unemploy­ ment cheques taken from us, although we were asked to contribute if we couldv I got $8.25 a week, of which I gave them $2.00. It was never mentioned if I missed a week,

The gathered press nodded agree­ ment and kept scribbling their notes in disbelief.

Ray returned to his picture parade. First there was an imported picture book of numerous women sucking numerous very odd looking cocks. The color photography was hardly first class, the pricks all looked as though they had some very dreaded dose — a lurid, luminous pink.

Ray was duly disgusted and wondered aloud “how anyone could indulge in such sordid acts.” The pressmen visibly warmed to Ray’s enthusiasm. “ Look at this —it’s terrible stuff,” he said switching to a copy of Sydney sex tabloid Ribald. He came to a column called “ Ribald Ditties” .

Ray pointed to one ditty and laughed, “ It’s incredible. Jt’s the sort of stuff you’d think twice about even at a stag party.”

Next he turned to a Melbourne publication called 2 & 1 — Orgy.

“This one here, I am ashamed to say, was printed in Melbourne. It purports to be a true story — a dirty story.”

He was holding a rather innocuous glossy paper production which told the story of two men seducing, as Ray Meagher put it, “a young girl.”

He said that it wasn’t all that bad in itself — no pubes showing — but it was the beginning. “ If we don’t stop this sort of stuff it won’t be long before they’re producing stuff like this” — producing imported booklet — “ This one’s a beauty” — a big broad grin at pressmen — “ the animal orgy one.”

The booklet was a collection of pictures of a girl fucking a stallion.

Actually it was a bit hard to decide whether it was the girl or the horse doing the fucking. “Well, that’s certainly not Moonee Valley,” chipped in one pressman. That remark brought the house down.

Meagher and Griffiths had never had such a receptive audience. The jokes came thick and fast. But Griffiths had one serious remark to make as he examined this young lady and her stallion. “Some of these girls look quite normal. I can’t imagine why they’d agree to do this porno stuff. It must be the m oney.I suppose.”

“Yes, I suppose,” nodded all the pressmen as they continued to scribble madly, still scarcely able to believe this comedy was really happening.

It was left to Griffiths to have the final word. As he prepared for a television interview there was a general discussion about how close the camera should be so that the viewers would be able to see the publications spread before Griffiths without actually being able to see any finer details — namely pubic hair.

As the camera began to whirr Griffiths commented: “ I hope my

We were given a limited amount of counselling by a social worker, more for girls who were obviously disturbed, and it was always made clear to us that we had only two practical alternatives: either to keep the baby, in which case we must not come back to the hostel with it (the matron felt that for girls about to give up their own babies it would be ‘more than flesh and blood could bear’ to see another girl with hers) — or to have it adopted, in which case we would not see the baby after birth, and our time in hospital would be spent in the special four-bed section reserved for the hostel at the local hospital. I know this seems cruel and of course you want to cuddle your own baby. But it is dreadfully difficult to give up a baby, and it must be an agony if you have actually seen and felt it. No wonder girls put them in Harnett House and hope to be able to take them home some day. It is a terrible thing for a woman to realize, but

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Address letters/telegrams to: The Digger, P.O. Box 77, Carlton,, Vic., 3053

once you have given up a baby for for refusing. We were definitely re­ adoption it is not yours — it belongs garded as “sinners” and no contra­ to the people who will care for it and ceptive advice was given — the love it. During the four months or so j general feeling seemed to be that we that I lived in the hostel not one i had “learned our lesson” and would baby was condemned to an not repeat our “ mistake” . Second institution. pregnancies were not admitted at the I don’t want to make the place hostel although an illegitimate birth sound like paradise — I was was regarded as preferable to desperately unhappy every day of my abortion. Visits from boyfriends stay there. It was run by the Church were not permitted, and we were of England and there was a fair allowed visitors only on Sundays. amount of religion shoved at us — We were supposed to go out only in but I don’t think anyone would company and with permission, but have been forced to attend against all these rules were flexible. their will, or penalized in any way I would have thought that with

Because the Indochinese are faced with severe environmental problems, US Senator Gaylord Nelson recently introduced the Vietnam War Ecological Assessment Act of 1973.

If enacted, the bill would set up a study commission under the direction of the National Academy of Sciences, similar to the one which investigated the long-range effects of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Nelson introduced a similar bill last year which died in the Foreign Relations Committee. Four million acres in Indochina have been sprayed with defoliants by American planes.

- EN.

general relaxation of sexual planners over the last few years these places would have become more relaxed and humanized, but apparently this is not so.

Betty Jones, Northcote, Vic.

mindless looking thug pointing his weapon towards the camera, and the concentration camp inmates lining up for their miserable ration of water on page 9.

Thomas G. Cochrane Richmond, Vic.

Dreadful threat to society

Newfong contradicted

DICKIE wrappings and not provocatively displayed. The Vice Squad was left to prosecute only those cases which it considered to be extreme. This usually meant spending most of its time on material VS cops considered subversive as no-one was going to kick up too much fuss about prosecutions against radical politicals.

Hamer also agreed to “ fully in­ vestigate” setting up a Censorship Board of Review to eliminate the arbitrary and inconsistent operation of the law.

That is where it stood for the past 12 months. Hamer was happy

Can U S spread life too?

because he didn’t like it as' a political issue, the producers were happy and making plenty of loot, and the newsagents were happy as they found that wrapping the publications in cellophane immediately doubled their sales. In fact, it was such a good gimmick that one bookseller actually wrapped second-hand books.

There is no doubt that Ray Meagher was disappointed in not winning the Premiership. Not that he thought he had much chance.

Henry Bolte never liked Meagher greatly. Bolte had deliberately snubbed him on several occasions.

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Sunday School teacher doesn’t see me with this stuff. I’d be in real trouble.” Griffiths is known for the comment, “ They call me the Gestapo.. That is good. It gives me the impression that I’m winning.”

But what of the politics?

There is no doubt that Victoria’sgentle Premier Dick Hamer has been embarrassed by the porn campaign.

When Hamer was Chief Secretary he moved towards a situation which would have made porn very much a non-issue. After discussion it was agreed that most of it could be sold as long as it was sealed in plastic

Vie tnam Eco logy Study

Strangely, although Meagher is very publishers will be bankrupt. Agents, much a poor man’s Henry, Bolte of course, will refuse to touch any­ favored people in the party who thing emanating from the publishers. were the very opposite to his The law is therefore irrelevant. character.

Meagher’s new approach has an Hamer had for many years been added political advantage — a new the heir apparent. He was everything bill must go through Cabinet and the Henry seemed to hate — a quiet, party room. But the raids are simply liberal, intellectual lawyer from a part of the administration of his good Melbourne family. He was not departm ent In fact they are not given to outlandish and abusive even that according to Meagher — attacks on his opponents. In fact they are acts of the Vice Squad and Hamer’s usual reply to attacks on not his decision at all. himself or his policies still is to This makes it virtually impossible quietly say he doesn’t agree because for Hamer to stop car even criticise of point one, two etc. etc. He tends Meagher, without a major party row to act on the assumption that his critics have integrity and it’s just a developing. matter of disagreement.

It is doubtful that Meagher Meagher is bitter because he believes pornography can win the believed Hamer got the job only election. He probably doesn’t even because he was backed by Henry. think it will be a big issue. Certainly Both he and Education Minister Hamer is not gang to make it one.

Lindsay Thompson have told both Nor would he see any immediate, parliamentary colleagues and press­ prospect of overthrowing Hamer. His men that they believe Hamer is. policy is more aimed at members of taking a hiding at the hands of the Liberal Party. At state level the Opposition Leader Clyde Holding’s party is at its most reactionary — rough-house parliamentary tactics.

Hamer is in reality out on a limb.

They have also criticised their boss Only his cautiousness really recomfor being indecisive, lacking leader­ mehds him to the majority. ship and failing to project himself Because of the quite dramatic in the media. change in the attitude of Victorian^ Meagher has another reason to to the Labor Party — Hamer will! be bitter — Hamer was largely res­ lose seats in this year’s election. It ponsible for having Meagher’s first seems inevitable and there is little he anti-pom bill shelved. The bill was a can do. It would rationally be hard joke — badly draughted, almost un­ to blame Hamer, but when it comes workable in practice — it was to losing seats politicians are not massacred in Cabinet and the party rational. On top of this Hamer will room. probably be forced into a coalition Meagher was undaunted and set government with the Country Party. about draughting a new one. At the Ray Meagher was second in the same time — in discussion with the ballot which elected Hamer as Vice Squad — he came up with a Premier. There are many reports plan to wipe out the pom publishers that the vote was close. These reports in a dramatic, controversy-making, seem to have emanated from the manner under the present laws. By Labor Party. Much more reliable seizing a whole print run the sources within the Liberal Party publishers have been put out of gave Hamer a much more comfort­ business — whatever happens in the able margin. Even so Meagher and court. A print run may cost the Thompson believe that margin is publisher as much as $50,000. Most made up of votes for Henry Bolte would not have that sort of money. and not Dick Hamer. With seats lost, They usually rely on sales — at least ministers dispossessed of portfolios, of the publication before — to pay an aggressive Country Parly demand­ the bills. ing constant concessions, and a The seizures mean they cannot brawling Clyde Holding dictating the sell anything for at least six months terms of debate in Parliament, Henry — the time it will take to get into Bolte’s votes may not be worth so court. In the meantime many of the much.

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Council is doing research into ways of reversing the effects of defoliation and other forms of chemical war­ fare, as well as sending medical supplies to both Vietnam and Cam­ bodia. — EN.

I have just read Issue No. 12 of your paper and found the political news and notes informative and interesting, the letters from readers equally so, and the cartoons original and entertaining. However I did not much care for the World War II news pictures on pages 8, 9 and 10; the teenagers, complete with flag, giving the Nazi salute on page 10; the hysteric, and the charismatic Leader in his high boots on page 8; the

In her article, “ Even his steno­ graphers are white” (page 1, The Digger, Feb. 10—24), Virginia Fraser quotes John Newfong as saying, “Then on his (the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Gordon Bryant) second trip, he took Eric Wicks the editor of Smoke Signals.”

The statement is untrue. I never went on any trip with Gordon Bryant, nor was I invited to go.

I am sorry that John, who is quite a likeable fellow in many ways, despite his capacity for woolly

thinking and inaccurate statements, considers Smoke Signals, which raised about $25,000 for the AAL in 10 years, “ a very second fate publication.”

It is a pity that during the few months he was employed by the Aborigines Advancement League (Victoria) as publicity officer, he did not take tne opportunity to improve the magazine by contribut­ ing one or two first rate articles, As honorary editor, I would have, appreciated his assistance, but I never managed to get one written word out of him.

However, I am sure John will be able to make .a first rate publication out of Identity which, as Virginia Fraser pointed out, is supported by a government grant. I wish him a long; and successful career as its editor.

Eric Wicks, Ivanhoe, Vie.

February 24 — March 10

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Page 2

The Digger

Into the lawyer’s office without a tie

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You’re 16, the cops beat you up when they took you in for question­ ing, and you were laughed out of the Published by High times Pty Ltd, f place when you asked to make a 127 Queensberry St., | complaint...

Carlton 3053 | You’re up on an attempted mur­ Postal Address: PO Box 77, | der charge, unable to pay a lawyer to Carlton 3053 jf represent you at your committal, ig­ Telephone: 347-6811 | norant of legal proceedings...

Postal address: P.O. Box 77, | You’re a woman living with a Carlton, Victoria, 3053. | man you’re not married to; you were busted and mistreated by police.

Editing: Phillip Frazer, Helen When you went to file a formal com­ Garner, Bruce Hanford plaint, you were handed over to the Administration and circulation: f CIB for three hours. Later when Garrie Hutchinson | you tried to cash your pension Advertising: Terry Cleary | cheque at the pub, one of the CIB Artwork and layout: Ian | men happened to be standing at the McCausland bar. He told the publican he’d be a Reporting: Jenny Brown, Colin | fool to cash your cheque...

Talbot, Virginia Fraser | You’ve signed a contract with a used car dealer without understand­ ing the fine print; they’re putting the bite on you and you can’t afford to pay, nor have you got the bread to consult a solicitor...

In other words, you’re one of the thousands of under class people fucked over by the law. Because you’ve got no money, you can’t pay for help; because you’re uneducated Subscriptions and typesetting: Helen Keenan | and scared you daren’t approach a Sydney office: Editorial — Jon | solicitor anyway. The Public Solici­ or Ponch Hawke's. Advertising— § tor’s too busy and you can’t make head or tail of the application form Michael Zerman. for the Legal Aid Committee. You’re 15 Avenue Rd., Glebe stuck.

Telephone: 660-6957 But there are people who want to Distributors: | help you, and what’s more, want to New South Wales: Allan Rodney f do it for nothing.

Wright (circulation) Pty Ltd, 36-40 | ** * Bourke Street, Woolloomooloo, I 2021. Telephone 357-2588.

The Fitzroy Town Hall is a Victoria: Incorporated Newsagen- | noble edifice rising incongruously cies Company Pty. Ltd., 113 | out of the criss-cross of small Roslyn Street, Melbourne, 3003. | streets and humble houses that make up one of Melbourne’s oldest Telephone 30-4222.

South Australia: High Times (Vic- I inner suburbs. On a hot evening I pick my way round the building to toria) Pty. Ltd., C/- Mother’s | Condell Street and find a gap in the Book Farm, 1 Corammandel Place, | iron railings where stone stairs lead Adelaide. down to a small, cool cubbyhole of West P. and H. Redman, TheAustralia: Digger accepts news, feat­ f a room. A couple of flies buzz» PO Box 3, Palmyra, 6157. ures, artwork or photographs from half-heartedly, an air conditioner contributors. switches itself on and off, there are Send material with a stamped stacks of papers and pamphlets, SAE if youfortnightly want it back, to The pencil drawings stuck to the wall, Published throughout Digger, 77, is Carlton, three young women (one with tat­ Australia.P.O. CoverBoxprice recom­ 3053. retail maximum. toos), a little boy, and behind the mended The Digger is a member of the desk Mick O’Brien, or M. O’Brien as Underground Press Syndicate (UPS). he introduces himself, thè solicitor on duty; unsmiling but friendly face, EN — Earth News spectacles, short hair, severely PNS — People’s News Service shaved, dressed in shorts and long STN — Slithy Tovfe News socks, a sturdy, very serious man; He sums up the legal service avails

Back numbers Back numbers of The Digger 1-12 are available from the office for 45 cents each.

Send postal order or cheque to: Back Numbers, The Digger, P.O. Box 77, Carlton, 3053.

Bobbies arm~up To many people, the unarmed police of Britain are an example they wish the Ideal cops would follow. But there are indications that the pleasant image of the un­ armed and helpful bobby may soon become a thing o f the past.

Now, the British Home Office and Ministry of Defence have issued a joint report of technical advice on weapons for the British police. The report recommends weapons such as the British Army rifle with tele­ scopic sight, and the standard American Smith and Wesson police revolver.

C O V E R PHOTO: PONCH H A W K E S

Twelve months worth of The Digger, 26 issues, will set you back $7.80. Unless you come under one of the following categories: OUT-OF-TOWN SPECIAL: If your postcode is 25 miles from a capital city, you can have one year’s subscription for $5 all up.

QUEENSLAND SALVATION SPECIAL: If you live in Queens­ land, the odds^ are you’re not reading this unless you’ve already subscribed, given the effective ban op The Digger by distributors in the northern state. However and whether or not, Queenslanders pay only $5 regardless of their city/country status.

U K action on French test

An English group called Green­ peace plans a telephone campaign to harasss the French Embassy in Lon­ don as a protest against the,proposed French H-test at Mururora Atoll this year. If the Greenpeace organi­ zation has its way, the telephone in the French Embassy will ring for a solid 24 hours on the first and third Monday’s of each month.

I Helen Keenan, Last year’s French bomb was * Subscriptions Manager, reportedly 50 times the size of the I The Digger, atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima I P.O. Box 77, at the end of the second World War. ■ Carlton, 3053.

Participants in the campaign I D ear Helen, will be instructed simply to suggest, I enclose m y cheque/postal ■ that any plans to explode a nuclear order for $7*80/$5.00 ($5.00 I device this year in the South Pacific, subs are only available to sub- be cancelled. — EN.

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Israeli torture Last month, the Israeli news­ paper Haretz published a statement by 117 imprisoned Israelis which charged the government and police with using brutal torture techniques against both Arab and Israeli political prisoners. The Israeli prisoners cited in the statement had been imprisoned on charges of con­ spiring with Arabs to commit sabotage and treason. They are members of the leftist Israeli group known as the Red Front.

According to the statement pub­ lished in the newspaper — which was prepared by the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights — the Israeli prisoners had been tortured by beatings, electrical shocks to the genitals, and * extremely cold

able to the not-so-rich before the The Fitzroy Free Legal Service opening of the Fitzroy Free Legal aims among other things to fill the Service. Firstly there’s legal aid pro­ gaps left by conventional legal aid. vided by the government: free legal' It was set up by barrister Peter assistance is available on application Faris, John Finlayson, a social to the Public Solicitor, but this ser­ worker with the Fitzroy Youth Wei- 4 vice applies only in criminal fare Centre, and interested barris­ matters, from the County Court up, ters and solicitors, social workers, and a wide variety of non-profess­ and resources are severely limited, which means that often people with ional people. It’s fully endorsed by Fitzroy councillors. no money go to court on serious People who come looking for criminal charges without any legal help find that all lawyers aren’t Representation at all. cold, aloof and cynical. Non-profess­ Secondly there’s the Legal Aid ional helpers give out information on Committee, a body financed by the sickness and unemployment bene­ legal profession. It also has limited finance, its application form is ex­ fits, workers’ compensation, and deserted wives’ and single mothers’ tremely daunting for non-bureaucrats pensions, making the office What it amounts to is legal assistance to people who on time payment. In a divorce ac­ approachable tion a $100 deposit is required be-; normally would never dare to front a solicitor. fore anything can be done. Nor does People who seek aren’t only the it offer what O’Brien called bulk representation: over the year ’71— poor, the migrants, or young kids from the inner suburbs. Often ’72, the Legal Aid Committee assisted they’re people who’ve been unable in 700 cases coming before the magi­ to meet the high costs of straight strates’ court. 700 cases would pass legal representation, or have been before the magistrates’ bench in a rejected countless times by Legal single fortnight.

Aid or the Public Solicitor, and Neither the Public Solicitor nor have nowhere else to go for advice. the Legal Aid Committee offers Fitzroy people won’t stop at a assistance in the very important area of committals for trials. A person legal service. They plan to extend their activities into a full-time legal, who appears unrepresented at a committal suffers a serious disadvan­ social and medical alternative service tage, because at committal the crown witnesses can be cross-examined and The Free Legal Service is open crown evidence heard, giving the every night except Sunday, from barrister a clear idea of the way the 5.30 to 11. There’s always a solici­ trial might go. Police are usually in­ tor on duty, and eight interpreters structed to lay the most serious are available: Greek, Italian, Spanish, charges possible under the circum­ Maltese, Yugoslavian, French, Mace­ stances, which an experienced lawyer donian and Turkish. Professional*' can break down. But an unrepresent­ ethics are observed, says O’Brien. ed person might at committal be Barristers briefed by Fitzroy Legal asked simply, “ Did you do it?” and, Service solicitors mark their briefs in the confusion of unfamiliar pro­ “ fee declined” . ceedings, might unwittingly plead The service is expanding at a guilty. So far the Fitzroy Free Legal tremendous rate for something that Service has filled this serious gap in five cases of alleged attempted mur­ started as a “ small community der, where other representation was thing” . In 12 months there have not available. been 3,000 enquiries; in a similar period the Legal Aid Gommittee, Mick O’Brien has been involved which is responsible for the entire for four years with young offenders state, handled 5,000 cases. jn Pentridge. In 12 months he’s been able to help with me appeals of 24 • Financial resources are almost kids jailed after appearing unrep­ non-existent. Money is urgently resented in magisjirates’ courts. All needed to set up a bail fund and of these appeals were successful: expand the centre so it (aijd the kids were released on bonds or possibly others) can remain open on probation. Of the 24, eight were day and night. Similar services will handled by the Legal Aid Commi­ soon be opening in Springvale, Broadmeadows, St. Kilda, Nunattee, and the rest as a result of ad wading and Geelong. boc requests.

showers. They had also been forced to witness the torture of their Arab friends.

One of the prisoners named in the statement is the son of a Communist party member of the Israeli Parliament. He told his attorney that he and his friends confessed to all the charges against them in order to avoid further torture.

The Israeli government and police have dismissed all charges of torture as “ Arab propaganda” . — EN.

Am erika discovers the bike Americans are becoming enthusia­ stic pedal-pushers at a rate that must be bringing some frowns to the board meetings of Detroit’s auto­ makers. Last year, according to Forbes magazine, the bicycle out­ sold the auto by 2.3 million units— a superiority unprecedented since the take-over of the “ Tin-Lizzy” .

- EN. ‘

Forgive them Dick A spokesman for the National Council of Churches — Dr. Robert Moss — said in Chicago this week that the Interdenominational Council will undertake a drive to win amnesty for all draft resisters.

In response to President Nixon’s “no-forgiveness” pledge at last week’s press conference, Dr. Moss pointed out that the word “ amnesty” doesn’t imply forgiveness anyway.

Said Dr. Moss, “To forgive a violation is to pardon. But amnesty is a legal action — to forget, to erase, to blot out in recognition of a greater interest — in this case the reconcilia­ tion of a nation. — EN.

Tommy seeks asylum In the past, many political refu­ gees have fled to neutral Sweden. The largest group have been Portugese soldiers, fleeing from colonial wars in Africa. Over 1,000 American ser­ vicemen have come to Sweden dur­ ing the last six years to avoid par­ ticipating in the Vietnam war.

Now it seems a new source of war deserters has developed. Last week a member of the British Royal Marines,

Robert Piper, arrived in Sweden to avoid doing service in Northern Ireland.

Piper had been on NATO exer­ cises in neighboring Norway. Hear­ ing that Sweden is a neutral country, Piper took his sleeping bag and a couple of sandwiches, and set off into the Norwegian winter snow. He slept out in the snow for two nights as he hiked across the mountains separating the two countries. After three days he arrived in Sweden, where the authorities are consider­ ing his request for asylum.

Piper’s mother is Irish, and Rob­ ert says he has many relatives in Northern Ireland. He has already done two tours of duty in the North, and when he heard his unit was; going to be sent back, he decided to desert.

— STN.

Two years towaste A Swiss planner and engineer has called for the designation of 1975 as International Equilibrium Year.

He’s alarmed at the current waste of natural resources, which may be exhausted within one hundred years.

The purpose of the International Equilibrium Year would be to mob­ ilise public opinion, scientists, and politicians so that efforts can be made to come to grips with the problem of uncontrolled growth and development.

— STN.

I gave at the office Ralph Nader’s recent study of American Law School students concluded that most of the talk about idealism and public service in the legal profession is little more than myth. Nader said that by the time most of today’s idealistic law students graduate and take on family responsibilities, “They’ll be indis­ tinguishable from their parents — except for their mustaches and their way out clothes.”

A more recent report,prepared by Theodore Becker and Peter Meyers of Northwestern University’s Law and* ,So rial Sciences Program, showed that while a healthy 30% of today’s law students plan to begin their careers' in public service positions — such as legal-aid lawyers or public defenders — the percentage of students who plan to remain in those positions for more than five years drops to just 10%. Almost a third of the students

February 24 — March 10

Feminism dilemma in metal union At the Victorian state conference of the Amalgamated Workers’ Union this month, there was strong debate on the role of women in work and unions. Recent amalgamation of the Boilermakers and Metal Worker^ with the Engineering Union means a large female membership of the new AMWU (an estimated 8,000-10,000 of the overall membership of 50,000), but the only woman delegate at the conference did not take part in the debate.

The debate was sparked off by a resolution encouraging the entry of women into apprenticeships. Digger's informant reports that the over­ whelming majority of delegates did not appear impressed by the vociferous arguments of one male delegate who (though running a very strong line on worker control), believed women’s place is in the home and definitely not in the work force.

The AMWU’s education sub­ committee, which runs many projects aimed at broadening the scope of union activities and awareness out­ ride the areas of conditions and wages into political and cultural fields, plans a special school for' women members on International Women’s Day, March 10. The union will pay the day’s wages of the. women who attend. The program will include a brief session on International Women’s Day and a speaker on women’s role in Austra­ lian labor history (both arranged by women). The afternoon session will be left for the women to organise as they please.

For early March the AMWU has organised ten lunchtime factory meetings for women, where move­ ment women will speak and organise discussions. It’s hoped that the International Women’s Day school will give impetus to these meetings.

All this activity by men on behalf of women who, in terms of office­ bearing, have no power in the AMWU; could be called benevolent chauvinism. One AMWU official, his consciousness raised by personal relationships with movement women, sees the need for women to forge their own role in union affairs, but fears the charge of paternalism if he acts to make union women’s lot easier. questioned expected to begin their careers with salaries of over $15,000 a year, while all but 6% of the others said they wouldn’t work for less than $10,000 to $15,000 a year.

Asked how much they expected to earn after five years of practice, 96% said they wanted at least $20,000 a year. — EN.

Conspiracy of lewdness The never-ending controversy concerning those American state laws which regulate sexuality was highlighted last week with the arrests of two performers in an Xrated skin-flick. The performers — charged in Paterson, New Jersey — are believed to be the first persons ever busted for fornication on a movie screen.

The charge is of simple forni­ cation. Sexual intercourse between two persons not married to one another.

The producer of the film was charged with “conspiracy to and permitting private lewdness.”

He faces a possible jail sentence of up to three years, while the per­ formers can only get maximum jail terms of six months. — EN.

UK contraception plan Liverpool, February 11 — Over 100 women from 17 different areas took part in the Women’s Abortion and Contraception Campaign Con­ ference in Liverpool on the weekend of January 27—28.

The use of abortion as a means of population control was raised — half of all married women who have abortions under the National Health Service are sterilised at the same time. This increases the risk of the operation considerably. Whilst the NHS is forcing sterilisation on women as a form of population control, the government is planning to take away the free contraception and advisory services now available in some local authorities.

The women agreed to start a campaign in support of an amend­ ment to the bill currently going through Parliament which will re­ organise the NHS. The amendment would allow for unrestricted free contraceptive supplies and advice for all. As it stands the proposed bill will take away the power of local

Catholics tool up The Catholic church at a national level can be expected to gear up for a long-term and intense battle against the recent US Supreme Court decision which struck down most state abortion laws. The national Catholic Reporter, a liberal Catholic newspaper, says that the Church will soon begin an anti-abortion educa­ tional effort and possibly a drive for an anti-abortion constitutional amendment.

The Director of the US Catholic Conference’s Family Life Division, James McHugh, has announced a proposal to get the anti-abortion message across to the church schools., One facet of the campaign would be a “more graphic and detailed presen­ tation of human growth and develop­ ment during the time in the womb.”

McHugh also confirmed that the Catholic Conference’s Family Life Division is “ Seriously studying the possibility of a constitutional amendment” in response to thè Supreme Court’s abortion ruling.

- EN.

Thai guerillas’ progress Dispatch News Service correspon­ dent John Burgess reports that at present an estimated 400 guerillas are tying down a mechanized force of 4,000 Thai soldiers in the mountains of Northern Thailand.

Military sources report that about 21 government soldiers have died since the campaign began last Sept­ ember. About an equal number of guerillas are thought to have been killed.

Correspondent Burgess inter­ viewed Thai officers who claim that the insurgents are mostly local Meo hill tribesmen, with a few Pathet Lao and North Vietnamese advisors. The independent Meo have traditionally resisted attempts by file government to interfere in their opium culti­ vation and slash-and-bum agricultural techniques.

Burgess concludes his report by noting that the “Meos’ hatred and suspicion of the government has reached the point where communi­ cation with them — except for bullets and napalm — is seemingly out of the question.” — EN. authorities to give free contracep­ tives except to ‘special’ cases only,* which means you’ll only be able to get them free for a year after an abortion or pregnancy. — PNS.

Pop a cassette A Swedish research group has proposed that people suffering from insomnia can use recorded hyp­ notic suggestions instead of sleeping pills.

Three psychology students at Uppsalla University have just finish­ ed a research project using 7 people who had suffered from insomni#.

The 7 played records with a voice that used hypnotic suggestion to put them to sleep.

Six of the seven reported positive, results. Three of the four who had been using sleeping tablets said they had been able to cut down on their pill consumption, and one had com­ pletely stopped taking sleeping pills.

Cosmic heat A science correspondent for the Toronto Financial Post took a close» look at the Bible and found that the Book of Isaiah says that in heaven “The light of the sun will be seven­ fold, as the light of seven days.”

Based on the Stephan-Bolzmann Radiation Law, that would make the celestrial temperature 977 degrees Farenheit.

Elsewhere in the Bible, hell is described as ” A lake that bums with fire and brimstone.” The maximum temperature for brimstone — or li­ quid sulfur — is 833 degrees Faren­ heit, making hell 144 degrees cooler than heaven. The difference would be hardly noticeable. —EN.

A bullet for Ted Bromley, Kent, February 11 — Bob Davis, who for the last three years has run Atlantis News Agency in Bromley, a London suburb, is coming up for trial at the Old Bailey on Monday, February 26, charged with sending an explosive substance, i.e. a bullet, through the post; sending a letter threatening to damage property and cause loss of* life; and having in his possession an explosive device, i.e. an electric micro switch, in circumstances that gave reasonable suspicion that its intended use would be for an unlawful pur­ pose. Police claim Davis tried to send a bullet in the mail to British

Herald’s obscenity Women are copping flying shrap­ nel in the latest outburst of the small-ad. war between Melbourne’s big dailies, the Age and the Herald.

In an attempt to divert some of the Age's enormous ad. revenue into its own coffers, the Herald ran a service for prospective clients inviting them to contact the Anytime Girl, who Would answer the ’phone both in and out of office hours.

The innuendo of this title did not escape the notice of Melbourne’s perv fraternity. Women staffing the tele­ phone service received so much bor­ ing and embarrassing sexual abuse that they asked the management to change the wording of the ad. The ad. disappeared for several days, but is now back on the front page of every issue.

Belgium’s progress A well-known Belgian doctor has been charged with performing 300 abortions during thè last year.

In Belgium, both abortions a n d . birth control are illegal. As a result thère are many unwanted-pregnancies among Belgian women every year.

The wealthier women can travel to countries such as England and Den­ mark to take advantage of liberal jabortion law — an estimated 150,000 Belgian women have abortions in this way each year. However, poorer women have no alternative to having children.

Dr. Willy Peers has long opposed, this situation. He is known to be a skillful gynaecologist and was the first doctor in the country to intro­ duce painless childbirth. Motivated by ideals, he often charged very little for performing abortions.

Dr. Peers was arrested after he performed an abortion on a mentally handicapped woman who had been raped. The woman’s own doctor had recommended the abortion, but the Belgian authorities had refused per­ mission. After Dr. Peers wap arrested, his files were seized, and it was discovered he had performed 300 previous abortions.

Since his arrest there have been many demonstrations, in which both Flemish and Wallon women’s groups have united with socialist and communist groups in protest.

- STN. PM Edward Heath — a traditional death-threat.

Bob Davis denies the charge and claims the police are trying to make out he was a one-man cell of the Angry Brigade. As a result of his arrest on December 16, 1971, Bob Davis lost his job at London Weekend Television and has been out of work» since then. He and his wife have also been obliged to give up the work of co-ordinating Atlantis News Agency. —PNS.

Church sells for conscience The World Council of Churches has released a list of 650 companies investing in or trading with South Africa, in* violation of United Nations’ resolutions calling for boy­ cotts of the racist state.

The companies named are all froip the United States, Britain, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. The World Council says it is these com­ panies which are responsible for help­ ing to maintain the exploitation of black people in Southern Africa.

The Geneva-based Council has sold its own holdings in these com­ panies and it is encouraging member churches to do the same. The Council is encouraging economic action against South Africa as the last hope short of armed conflict to end racism there. - STN.

Benign dictate The Singapore government has announced the creation of a Press Council to lay down guidelines for the press and oversee appointments of key editorial staff. The govern­ ment is also considering legislation to require all major newspapers tc become public companies. This would make it harder for anti-govern­ ment groups to control newspapers.

- STN.

Time Out out London, February 11 — W. H. Smith has refused to sell the February 9 issue of Time Out, the London weekly, because of an article entitled “The IBA: The Facts are these”. The article dealt with the banning of the World in Action program, “The.Friends and Influ­ ences of John L. Poulson” , due to have been screened last Monday.

- TNS.

Page 3

The Digger

February 24 — March 10

L A R R Y M ELTZER

cheeked Christian men. I hesitated at that dollar, for the Gallery had just robbed me of 20c to get in the door, but I allowed myself to be drawn in by the utter grotesqueness of the idea, combined with some sort of perverse journalistic integrity. , The organisers, a couple of slick priests dressed as PR men (or could it be the other way around) say that the congress will only cost Australian Catholics $500,000. Earlier estimates were as high as $6,000,000. Certainly the figure of $500,000 seems most odd, for, to anyone with eyes, it is clearly a multi-million dollar venture.

So where did the money come from?

The state government threw in a good slab — a vote-buying deal — and so did the city council, but the real, money is coming out of the pockets of the devout Catholics who pay to go to the exhibitions, seminars, concerts and so on. So, while it may be true that it’s not going to cost the Catholic Church, as an institution, so much (in direct expenses, anyway) it is going to cost the Catholic Church, as people, a fortune. Pomp and ceremony has to be paid for, as we all know.

by Bill E. Garner In the middle of a football stadium, a frail old man, wearing a strange mediaeval smock over a long black dress, lifts a silver cup high over his head. He mutters some words, from a dead language. A hundred thousand people bend be­ fore him. They have come to eat god.

Across the city, at one of the world’s most famous tennis courts, a slim young man slips off some of his glittering robes, sinks moaning to the silver stage, and fucks it. Eight thousand people rise ecstatically in their seats, hungry.

The Rolling Stones are outnum­ bered by the Catholic Church, but then they’ve only been at it for 10 years, and they don’t claim to have god on their side. At a meeting on “The Search for Church Unity” , the Governor General, Sir Paul Hasluck, tells the audience, “ It’s so important that the other side shouldn’t get away with it. By ‘the other side’ I mean the people who are seeking publicity for things that are, in simple words, dirty and dis­ gusting.” Five miles away, Mick prances and dances, flicking his pel­ vis at the crowd like a snake's tongue.

Into Melbourne’s St. Patrick's Cathedral, like animated mummies they process: eminences, cardinals, archbishops, bishops. Up out of the tombs they come, in their beautiful linen; faded time-travellers flown in from the past on Boeing 707’s.

In his long white beard walks His Beatitude Maximus V Hakim, patriarch of Antioch and all the East, of Alexandria and Jerusalem.

The language of the message from the Supreme Pontiff seems awkward even on the practised lips of the priest reading it out. His voice is flat.

He reads with difficulty, pausing in the wrong places, as if the words have receded more and more into meaninglessness with the passage of centuries. “The Eucharist is the wellspring of Christian hope...wishing to add the strength of our authority... tru ly , really and substantially present...” “The Eucharist is...” One. hears the words, as sounds, knowing that they are intended to carry some great symbolic weight, but they sag beneath the mysterious burden.

Quickly, swing the censer back and forth, altar boy. Sing, choir. Move your hands, priests, across the front of your bodies.

At the Stones concert there is a sniff of incense, too, but smells like a different brand. There it mixes with the smell of sweaty armpits and slippery crotches, not with the old aunty smelly of lace laid away in lavender drawers which wafts from Christian clothes. The concert crowd leaps and shouts in response to “ Honkytonk Women” and “ Mid­ night Rambler”. They dance in the aisles. They are ecstatic, but not in the dazed, trusting-in-ignorance way in which the religious sit meekly in their churches. Jagger doesn’t claim to be anything more than a man, after all, except, perhaps, to be a woman as well. There’s nothing be­ yond the flesh, and the flesh is less able to deceive than the spirit.

The symbol of the Congress is everywhere. It’s a sort of combination Aap chair and Danish sherry glass with a cocktail olive, or maybe a golf ball, inside it. The only thing it symbolises is the desperate attempt of the church to be modern, which is quaint, for modernity is in the

A t Melbourne's Eucharistic Congress, 1973

Would you buy a used god from these men? process of being abandoned by the rest of us. The Melbourne City Council has decked out the streets with banners in the usual MCC tradition, which gives the unmistakeable impression that somebody is trying to sell something.

And that impression is pervasive.

There are a lot of exhibitions. In the Christian paraphenalia? What fusing and fizzing of the brain connections goes on when a European from East Burwood looks at a bark painting and tries to understand it as a Christian? But that is nothing com­ pared with the much-vaunted Aboriginal Mass. What is an Northern annexe of the Exhibition Buildings (where nothing can be made to seem attractive) a display of Aboriginal art stands between Pellegrini’s devotional articles and

an array of laminex altars and stainless steel cups and crosses from Albion plate. You can buy mementos: eucharistic ashtrays; special stamps for philatelists; ecu­ menical tea-towels. There’s also a special police station in there (is it part of the exhibition?), staffed with Irishmen, no doubt.

What is this display of Aboriginal art doing in the midst of all this Aboriginal Mass? It is “an attempt to express the Eucharistic act in the cultural and thought patterns of the Aboriginal.” All I can see is another piece of cultural and religious imperialism.

The same contradiction bedevils Action for World Development, which is a movement trying to re­ concile Catholicism and a quasi­ socialist critique of economic

development in the Third World.

The Catholic Church is by its very nature imperialist. AWD claims to be anti-imperialist.

A1 Grassby appears to be the only politician to have got any mileage out of the Stones. But every politician, from the Prime Minister down, was slavering to get his tongue onto the cardinals’ collective arsehole. And not for love of the Church.

Whitlam flew the papal legate down from Canberra in his VIP jet. Clyde Holding oiled his way into Raheen, Archbishop Knox’s little house.

Phillip Lynch read a lesson in the cathedral asking the Lord to “save those who are oppressed and per­ secuted,” which is probably a fair statement of Liberal policy towards the oppressed and persecuted. “ Save

A tribute to the experienced:

She did but pass by

by Rennie Ellis The 35 minute wait between Madder Lake and the Stones got the edge up in all three Melbourne audiences. Last concert, Sunday afternoon’s, the recorded music jangled along for close to 40 minutes as the Stones waited for a respite from the heat.

At the 30 minute mark one lady got up, took off her top, and started boogying in Section H. The crowd responded enthusias­ tically, but not so the cops. Just as they had hounded and beaten a large naked man the night before, they moved quickly to stem this sabbath criminality. However, show­ ing a sound grasp of the situation, our protagonist swiftly replaced the top and non-plussed the wallopers.

Once more within the law she treated all to a fine display of gayabandon dancing through to the appearance of Jagger and co.

Even then she refused to admit defeat. She moved behind the stage barricade and was rocking out again.

Two big men in blue uniforms Gatecrasher Carol danced — first bare-breasted, second behind stage barriers.

Police moved in and upended her — till Jagger granted a reprieve.

R E N N IE E L L IS

pounced, she went limp, they up­ ended her and started to cart her off.

All was not lost —Jagger appealed to the constables to let her be, and they did. In a spontaneous show of gratitude, our lady bestowed a big kiss on the nearest cop and went on ■dancing. *** One pleasant Sunday afternoon ex-model and young mother Carol Townsend took leave of her two sons, Ned, seven and Jarra, five. She drove in a northerly direction along Glenferrie Road, her favorite dog Tuti Fruti beside her. It was a 1 hot day and Carol was dressed accordingly.

As she drew close to Kooyong Tennis Courts she saw a mob, milling around the gates. Her head flowing with nostalgic memories of the days when Australia ruled sup­ reme in world tennis championships, • she mused: “There must be a pennant match on.” On closer inspection she discovered no typical tennis freaks, and suddenly it came together — the Rolling Stones’ concert.

Being a music lover our young mum stopped, and with Tuti Fruti clutched firmly under one arm she' mingled with the crowd. The vibes were good and she figured sitting in 1

the sun watching the Rolling Stones > would be a nice way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

However there was a problem — Carol didn’t have a ticket, and there was a squad of cops, an army of security men, and a gang of hired killers between her and inside...as many adventurous lads had already discovered to their sorrow.

Carol was undaunted. A resource­ ful lady, well-schooled in deception.

She didn’t work in an ad. agency for nothing...

Here’s her story, in her own giggly words: “Well I really thought it would be kinda fun to see the concert, so I thought, what if I whip off my top and just walk through the gate?

Hopefully they’ll all be so busy looking at the ol’ boobs that no-one will get around to stopping me.

And if anyone gets rough I’ll get Tuti Fruti to snap at them. Anyway, it worked like a beauty. I found a place to sit. Some chap befriended me and everything was sweet, except that the Stones didn’t arrive and the crowd was getting bored so I thought I’d better do something here. And I was pretty caught up in the whole scene and, ah, well, you know the rest...”

A triumph for the resourceful­ ness of the mature woman.

us from war, Lord,” the balding war­ monger bleated.

This Eucharistic Congress is called the Congress of the People. What would the Kama Sutra say about such a congress? One conjures up a Fellini-like image of a bundle of nuns and priests, popes and school­ girls, old ladies and altar boys, rolling over and over in orgaistic frenzy. No, it’s not really a sexy occasion. It’s still a men’s event. Cardinals, bishops, priests, all wear dresses, but there’s not a woman 1amongst the, lot. The pope might be an old woman, but he’s not very spunky.

The piece de resistance is, of course, the cardboard photographic replica of the Sistine Chapel. The eager queues of nuns have their money ($1.00 Adults; $2.00 Family; 40c Children) extracted by smooth­

The prostitution of the Melbourne press was remarkable to read.

The Age even devoted an editorial to a refutation of the idea that the whole congress was just a PR job, presumably in an attempt to justify the mouth job it was doing itself on the Church. But Sir Paul Hasluck blew that one when he said that it was “ a demonstration that there are in Australia still a very considerable number of people...who stand for the old truths.”

Actually, there was considerable dispute as to what were the “old truths.” The Loyal Orange Institution struggled into the papers with advertisements warning that the moves of the Catholic Church to­ wards church unity were a plot directed towards securing Catholic dominance. Other protestant sects warned the public not to break the bread at the MCG because the Catholics were trying to slip a bit of Christ’s “ real and substantial” body into it. The theological division over the doctrine of transubstantiation merely evoked, for me, memories of Matriculation Modern History A, and desperate attempts to remember Luther’s birthdate. And yet, here it was, being raised like a conceptual corpse. The idea of eating Christ’s flesh and drinking his blood still smacks of cannibalism, somehow.

If it was a joke, it would be brilliant, but the church has never been strong on pop art. Imagine, we could have cardboard replicas of the Sistine Chapel everywhere: “ Put the Sistine Chapel in your own home today!” But why stop with the Sistine Chapel? Why not a cardboard replica of St. Peter’s itself, indeed, o f the whole Vatican City, and fill it with wax models of the pope and his entourage and send it touring round the world. Few would notice the difference.

It’s a pathetic little exhibit.

There’s something truly sad about it: the classic-comic version of the real thing. You might as well lie on your back on the lounge-room floor and hold an art book at arm’s length, for all the sense it gives you of what it’s actually like in the Sistine Chapel.

Among this week’s buys, $5.20 for the Stones was better value than $1.00 for the Sistine Chapel.

\

Page 4

The Digger

February 24 — March 10

The ideology o f a universal business;

T he‘DrugProblem ’: the myths and the reality The Indian Hemp Drugs Commission “Drug Problems” constitute an 1893-4, said: 11 industry, and every industry needs a The moderate use of these drugs is the rule, and...the excessive public relations angle. The indus­ use is comparatively exceptional. try’s angle is that drug abuse is to The moderate use practically pro-’ be understood in terms of individ­ duces no ill effects. uals with problems, and that these In the USA, mere possession individuals should be dealt with by of marijuana can bring 40 years in the law, and/or medicine. gaol in one state and cost a $5.00 Pushers aren’t the only class of fine in another. In Australia, in people who make something from 1883, an import duty of a penny a the “drug problems” . “ Drug pound was imposed on Indian hemp. problems” also provide opportuni­ Cannabis was not then smoked in ties for politicians, industrialists, Australia but was taken orally, it ptlblic servants, journalists, doctors, being ‘lauded for its effect in allev­ lawyers, police, social workers, char­ iating pain, migraine, insomnia, dys­ ity buffs, (and especially psycholog­ menorrhea, difficult parturition and ists) to earn money, fun and fame. cramps.’12 Intertwined through the medical/ Clearly, the drug itself is not the legal concept of a “drug problem” sole determinant of attitudes and are themes of social chaos, the im­ minent collapse of society, and we’ve policies involving drugs; nor is in­ formation about the drug, as the never had it so bad. history, of tobacco shows.

The police and the press, who have a working relationship, run Abuse of heroin is a serious prob­ stories with thick headlines, stressing lem in the USA. In late 1971, there that we are or soon will be facing a was an estimated total of 560,000 crisis; that drug abuse is on the in­ addicts. 13 The Australian Senate crease, and the social order is Select Committee Report in Í971 threatened. There’s a sweet nostalgia cites official records at 300 addicts, to the public relations campaign; though of course this must be an we’re told the stresses of modern life underestimate. Citations of the relat­ are becoming more and more un­ ively slight number of heroin addicts bearable, and if only we could have in Australia are usually accompanied stuck to the way things used to by warnings about imminent increas­ es following overseas trends. It is be... instructive to quote the Argus: “Whilst the (Pharmacy) Board did

by Robin Winkler not believe thàt thè morphia and cocaine habit had assumed very It is instructive to consider those large dimensions in Victoria, the good old days, in Australia and else­ experience of other countries” Jhadi led them to decide restriction where. was necessary. This was written In 1691, smokers of tobacco in 1912. A common theme of anti­ faced the death penalty in Luneberg, drug legislation in the drug laws Germany.11 In Russia, Tzar Michael of 1913 wa^ not that abuse of Federovitch executed anyone on morphia had increased, but that whom tobacco was found*2 and in it might. 14 Turkey, the nose of the tobacco Australia’s heroin comes from S. r user was pierced through with the E. Asia. This is increasingly so for stem of his pipe and he was ridden the USA also, as the Turkish poppy through town on a donkey.3 Today, fields have been greatly reduced. we now know-that tobacco is indeed British and French colonialists in dangerous: death due to cancer of S.E. Asia, during the 19th Century, the lung has more than doubled in financed their governments by mono Australia since 19504 , but now we polising opium dens. For example, spend more than l l x/2 million dollars revenue from opium in the British annually56 to encourage people to Malayan Straits settlements in 1904 use the very same drug. constituted 59% of all government Ally Bashratli, in testifying to the revenues. As recently as 1938, op­ Royal Commission on Opium in ium revenues in French Indo China’s India, published 1894—5, said: opium production jumped from 7.5 I am 75 years of age and was tons in 1940 to 60.6 tons in 1944, bom at Lucknow. Formerly I was increasing the opium revenue from a fireman in the GIT Railway 15 million piastres in 1939 to 24 Company, now I do no work... million in 1943.15 I have smoked madat (opium) The British earlier had not only as a luxury for the past 50 years. monopolised opium sales in India I smoke two* annas worth daily.

My eyesight * is very good, and but were exporting over 2,400 tons so is my general health. I always annually in 1838, most of which advise my friends to take opium, went to China, despite the fact that for if taken in small quantities China had banned opium imports in it does one a lot of good.5 1800.16 The Commission reported that: As Vietnamese nationalists in the the use of opium among the 1930’s and 1940’s pointed out, op­ people of India in British Provin­ ces is, as a rule, a ifioderate use,, ium monopolies were the ultimate* and that excess is exceptional, ¡example of colonial exploitation.

The colonies built their profits and and condemned by public opin­ ion... We have no hesitation their development programs from in saying that no extended phys­ opium sales while at the same time ical or moral degradation is caused weakening any opposition to the by the habit.7 exploitation and ensuring a cheap labor force, as occurred in Australia Until early this century, opium as well, with Aborigines. was freely available in Australia and . Today, in Australia, the govern­ opiate based remedies were widely recommended.8- Godfrey’s Cordial, ment does not draw its revenues from opium (although it once did). Op­ Dover’s Powder, and the well known ium or heroin is not the major laudanum were the most popular and were widely recommended for> drug abused in Australia. Today, two of the major drugs abused in Aus­ diarrhoea and stomach complaints.

Wet nurses found these remedies in­ tralia are alcohol and nicotine. In' valuable in keeping their young char­ 1969—70, the Australian government earned $396 million'in excise from ges from crying.

Around 1870, Alfred Howitt plan­ the sales of alcoholic beverages and $251 million in excise from the sales ted opium poppies on his farm at of tobacco goods,!7 The govern­ Bacchus Marsh in Victoria; in 1871, ment’s financial state becomes even Messrs. Hood distributed free seed to more serious when one considers encourage more cultivation, and in that much of that revenue comes 1891, there were 11 opium growers from heavy users of these drugs. A in the Bacchus Marsh area of Victoria. study in Ontario, Canada, showed The Victorian opium growers’ opium was of a high quality “con­ that although only 6.1% of alcoholic taining up to 14% of morphia.” There beverage consumers could be con­ is little doubt more opium was con­ sidered problem drinkers, that 6.1% sumed in Australia per capita last consumed 40% of the total sales, century than this. Today, mere pos­ volume. 16 Similar figures can be session of opium in Australia can calculated for tobacco and analgesics use. The government draws consider­ land you in jail.

In pre-Hispanic Mexico, if a young able revenue from drugs of abuse man was drunk, or was in the pos­ and is not financially disinterested in attempts to curtail their availability. session o f,wine or in the company of drunks he “was beaten with clubs until he was dead or he was garrotted in the presence of all the young men.” 9 In 1972, Australians spent millions on alcoholic beverages and Bob Hawke gains support by his The major drug groups abused record breaking speed in consuming in Australia are drugs that are legally beer; available: alcohol, tobacco, sedatives Henry Anslinger, then US Com­ and analgesics. Where legally avail­ missioner of Narcotics,; berated the able drugs are abused, the manufac­ turers and distributors of those drugs world, saying, in 1953, While opium can be a blessing exert a considerable influence over or a curse, depending on its use,, drug policies, and drug abuse itself, marijuana is only and always a as the profits of their businesses are scourge which undermines its vic­ directly, at stake. tims and degrades them mentally, It was the Bayer chemical cartel morally and physically... A small dose taken by one subject of Germany that coined the brand may bring about intense intoxic­ name ‘heroin’ for their new all ation, raving fits, criminal purpose pain reliever and in 1898 it launched an aggressive international assaults.10I advertising campaign to promote its new product. 18 Dr. Winkler is a member o f the In Victoria, the first bill ever faculty o f the School o f Applied introduced to label opium and laud­ Psychology at the University o f anum as poisons, limit their general NSW, and this paper was presented, availability and limit their use with in a slightly different form, at that children came up for its second University's annual conference on reading in the Victoria Assembly in Drugs and Society.

1857.19

Government money

“ On the same day, however, Dr Evans MLA presented a petition opposing the bill signed by the “Council and members of the Phar­ maceutical Society of Victoria and other druggists” . The petitioners complained of the ‘indiscriminate injustices’ of the bill and requested that future legislation give due weight to their views. In the face of this strong position the bill lapsed and further action was de­ layed for 19 years.” 20 Clearly, it is not only the manu­ facturers but those who distribute legal drugs of abuse who influence drug policies.

Such lobbying continues today.

Analgesics abuse is one of the most common forms of drug abuse in Aus­ tralia; particularly among women.

Analgesics are more freely available in Australia than in most Western countries and, there is reason to be­ lieve that restriction of their avail­ ability might help reduce the danger of their abuse. The pharmacists and drug manufacturers are presently en­ gaged in a battle over restriction of analgesics sales to pharmacies. Con­ sumption of more than 2,904.3 mil­ lion tablets a year is at stake. 21

With such high stakes, each side is motivated to present a view of analgesics abuse that will win the largest profit for itself. For example, the major analgesics manufacturers, in their submissions to both the Sen­ ate Select Committee and the Nation­ al Health and Medical Research Council, have based their views mainly on a large Unisearch study of analgesic consumption conducted by the School of Applied Psychology, University of New South Wales.22 This study they claim to be the “only reliabje and properly constit­ uted Australian survey on mild anal­ gesic usage” and “ the only survey carried out by an accredited research organisation.” “ Any other figures” , the manuf­ acturers claim, “are largely ‘guestimates’.” The study concludes: (1) more than 99% of people take analgesics ‘responsibly’; (2) only 0.8% use analgesics ‘excessively’; (3) “There is no sign in the data for any extensive habitual con­ sumption of analgesics.” 23 The study was commissioned for Woods, the makers of Relaxa-Tabs.

Analysis of the study and its data indicate that 99% refers to those taking 2—3 tablets per dose, ana also pays no attention to those who consume multiple doses daily for many years.

Reanalysis of the data from that study indicates that daily users take at least three tablets a day and nave been doing so for five years or more.

There are around 11% of such people. Again, it is important to keep* in mind that approximately 11—15% of_Australian adults are daily users, who typically consume two tablets a day or more. A simply calculation suggests that 42% of all the tablets manufacturers produce and distrib­ utors sell are being consumed by these excessive u s e r s . 2 4 Manufacturers and distributors may not wish this to be the case but their advertising campaigns have so successfully avoided a tarnished image for their product that a sur­ vey in 1968, showed more than a third of the large population studied felt analgesics to be completely harm­ less.25 Most of us know the style of advertising of analgesics perhaps it reached its pinnacle with the prom­ otion that gave free samples of anal­

in the 'area whom they are using to I prevent young radicals from meeting j fight insurgency. .together in their usual places — McCoy in his Politics o f Heroin coffee sho^ '.by railing against the I in Southeast Asia, writes: evils of coffee, rigorously controlling “ Since the CIA was using the coffee houses and threatening to I Meo population to combat Pathet close them down.40 Possible possess- \ Lao forces in the mountains of ion of marijuana, is frequently used northeastern Laos, the prosperity in attempts to imprison young radi­ and well-being of this tribe was of paramount importance to the cals in the United States, e.g.: John Sinclair, one of many agency’s success. By 1965, the CIA had created a Meo army of million American marijuana smokers 30 thousand men that guarded who also happened to be a leader of radar installations vital to bomb­ the radical White Panthers, was sen­ ing North Vietnam, rescued tenced to 10 years jail for possession downed American pilots and of a minute amount of marijuana.. A battled Pathet Lao guerillas. stipulation of various groups of Viet­ “Without air transport for their nam Veterans Against the War is that opium, the Meo faced economic ruin. There was simply no form of .members should attend meetings air transport available in northern ‘clean’; the rule is based on the Laos except the CIA’s charter experience of political harrassment airline, Air America. Air America justified through the drug laws. began flying opium from mountain The importance of the user in villages north and east of the drug policies may assist in under­ Plain of Jars to General Vang standing the paradoxical contemp­ Pao’s headquarters at Long Tieng. orary situation where legally available Air America was known to be drugs primarily abused by older age flying Meo opium “ as late as groups receive less governmental em-; 1971.” 32 /President Nixon recently phasis than the drugs of youth, announced that keeping narcotics despite consensus amongst drug ex­ out of the USA is “just as important perts that the extent and severity of as keeping armed enemy forces from alcohol, nicotine, sedative and anal­ landing in the United States” and gesic abuse is greater than the extent went on to announce he would cut and severity of drugs used by young off aid to countries whose leaders people. The so-called drugs of youth, “protect the activities of those who e.g.: marijuana, hallucinogenics, contribute to our drug problem.” amphetamines, are used by people This of course puts President Nixon whose behaviour in areas other than in an invidious position since as the drugs is seen as a threat to the mores CIA itself has pointed out, with of the prevailing society. respect to Laos, “ the difficulties of This theme is time-honored. The undertaking such drastic action (as history of drug policies includes many aid cut-offs) cannot be overemphas­ examples of ‘moral reformers’: indivi­ ized, since...the risk of jeopardizing duals who agitate publicly for moral some part of the military effort is purity while arguing moral decadence high.” And with respect to South« is all around. America’s Henry An­ Vietnam: “ It is not in the US interest slinger, Australia’s John Wood, and to implement an aid cut-off, even to Mr. W. Telford, member for Grey punish Viet Nam for failure to con­ North, Canadian House of Commons, trol drugs,..” 33 1907: Drug policies and attitudes to, “There is scarcely a town or city in Canada where you will not drugs are shaped not only by power­ find boys, the sons of respectable ful vested interests but by social parents, who have not dwarfed beliefs about cultural groups. their bodies, ruined their intellect Attitudes towards certain groups in and damaged thier moral per­ society form the basis of drug policy, ceptions to such an extent that and that policy is then used to they do not know the difference sanction government action based on between right and wrong, and these attitudes. consequently many of them have (1) The Chinese: In Australia, had to be sent to reform­ atories.”4!

New Zealand34 and Canada, 3 5 Mr. Telford was speaking about attitudes towards the Chinese deter­ mined drug policies. In each of these the dangers of tobacco. In these countries at the times concerned, different countries, at different times, more opium was probably being used for different drugs, there are two

by Caucasians than the Chinese, but intertwined themes: qne where the the Caucasians drank it as patent drug user is seen as someone who medicine, while the Chinese smoked reflects a decline in community stan­ it. Legislation was clearly racist, in dards, and the other, where the drug that it focussed on only one group, is seen as an agent in producing a ’ the Chinese. In 1901, the New Zea­ moral’decline in the individual user.

Today, we tend not to talk about land Opium Prohibition Act was defined solely in terms of opium ‘moral decadence’ and ‘moral im­ smoking, not opium drinking.36 purity’. But the themes are still Import of smoking opium was dec­ there. It is the words that have lared illegal and import of opium changed. There are still those who capable of conversion to a form speak of the permissive society and suitable for smoking was to be by its drugs but now it is more per­ government permit. No Chinese could suasive to say drugs and the life biggest chunk of revenue the gain such a permit. Police, if they styles of their users reflect psychiat­ broadcast industry received. In ric illness. The long haired youth the face of the findings of the had a warrant, could search and who uses drugs is no longer decadent seize in private premises.

No warrant Surgeon General’s Report on Cig­ but sick. But our definitions of arette Smoking and Health — that was required for premises occupied psychiatric illness or abnormality de­ cigarette smoking was intimately by Chinese. rive from the prevailing society’s involved in 300,000 deaths a year Such legislation was not concerned to the tobacco industry’s volun­ about the Chinese harming them­ notions about what is normal, good tary offer to remove advertising selves, but the dangers to whites. and sensible. It is so much easier to from the air was to refuse to re­ Similar legislation was adopted in sustain the new morality of psychia­ lease them from their con­ Australia and as Victorian MLA, try as psychiatrists do tend to see tracts.” 29 John Wood said, in 1873, while those who may be in some more Australia has not banned cigar­ speaking to it, “he would not be general sense, “sick” . It seems reason­ ette advertising. Such a policy pro-, utterly inconsolable if through able to say that: tects revenue for the government, because scientists are the modern opium, they (the Chinese) suffered cigarette manufacturers, and adver­ ‘pawnbrokers of reality’...and the fate which fell on the first bom psychiatrists are defined as the tisers and the media. of Egypt” , but he was concerned most relevant group of scientific about what he felt was a ‘rapid specialists in matters of unusual increase of the use of opium amongst behaviour, their perceptions have the white population, especially replaced those of the moral re­ former. Marijuana use is no longer young girls.’37 sinful, but unhealthy. The words (2) The Aborigines'. In the late have changed but the message is nineteenth century in Queensland, essentially the same.42 property owners paid Aborigines who Where drugs are a major factor worked for them in ‘large supplies of Drug policies, in these various in import or export revenue, drug opium’. The Aborigines consumed ways, reflect notions people hold policies have influenced international opium by dissolving the ash in water about what is worthwhile in society political relationships. As previously and drinking it. Dr. Walter Roth, and what is not. Politicians are per­ noted, one of British Colonial thé Queensland Protector of Aborig­ haps even more sensitive to such India’s main exports in the early ines, in Royal Commission testimony, notions than they are to the pressures nineteenth century was opium. A told of ‘white scalpers...actually buy­ from vested interests. However, con­ major market at that time was China. ing skins from the blacks and paying temporary politicians do not have to In 1800, China banned opium im­ them in opium.’ choose between these different ports but the British, despite repeat­ “The effect of opium” , he said, pressures, for they coincide. The ed Chinese requests to desist, con­ “was utter demoralization of their drugs of youth are not a great source tinued. The Chinese dumped several body and soul; they became so of revenue for drug manufacturers thousand kilos of British opium into seized with the craving that they and distributors. Focus on such drugs Canton harbour and there followed sold themselves, children, women helps detract from the abuse of or anything to get it.” 38 what the Chinese historians called drugs they themselves produce. The In 1897, Queensland introduced “the Opium War” . The British even­ the “ Aborigines Protection and Re­ community, threatened by an alt­ tually forced the Chinese to open striction of the Sale of Opium Act.” ernative culture that attracts their their ports to European merchants, children, very willingly support pol­ thereby forcing the import of The Act made it an offence for any icies that are based on anti-counter opium. 30 person apart from a doctor, chemist or wholesale dealer to sell opium. It culture sentiments.

Drug and political policies are Drugs are, in the broadest sense, also linked with respect to illegal would seem the Act constituted political. They have been throughout drugs, the clearest contemporary ex­ positive government action, albeit their history and continue to be. ample being American involvement paternal. But the response to the Act by the Queensland Collector of Cus­ in heroin traffic in SE Asia. l.L . Lewin, Phantastica: narcotic and stimulating drugs. Trans. P.H.A.Wirth toms was to issue 200 more permits The “ Golden Triangle” of SE from the second German edition.

Asia — north eastern Burma, nor­ •to sell opium. Roth tried to prevent Kegan Paul, Trench and Trubner: thern Thailand and northern Laos — this flagrant denial of the principle London.

2.Ibid of the Act and failed.39 harvests about 70% of the world’s 3. Ibid.

Drug policies are affected not 4. Hetzel, B. S. Health, mass media and illicit supply of raw opium. 31 A the social environment. Journal o f the only by the race of the user, but also major part of America’s political Commonwealth Department of by the degree to which the user is strategy in the area has been to pro­ Health, 1972, 22, 9-15.

5. Drug trafficking and drug abuse: seen as a threat to the established vide aid, support and general sanction report from the Senate Select order of society. Where a group in to various local leaders. It has become Committee. Australian Government society that is perceived to threaten clear recently that this exercise en­ Publishing Service, Canberra, 1971, p.49. the mores of the prevailing culture, tails the American government direc­ 6. Report of the Royal Commission on consumes a drug, drug policies may tly and indirectly supporting illicit Opium (7 volumes). 1894-5. H.M.S.O. London. Section quoted in G, be formulated so as to provide a trade in heroin. The Americans are Edwards, Unreason in an age of legal means of defusing the threat. committed to providing support and reason. Lecture 1, The Edwin Stevens Charles II in England attempted to Lectures 1971, delivered at the Royal aid to the major growers of opium

gesics with purchases of sanitary nap­ kins (a practice since discontinued).

In 1968, IIV 2 million dollars was spent on purchasing media exposure for tobacco accessories, approxim­ ately seven million for pharmaceuti­ cals, and four million for alcoholic beverages. 26 Drug companies employ 1 detailer to every 18 doctors and 20 cents of every dollar of costs is spent on advertising and promotion (3 cents of every dollar on research).27 The NSW Department of Health’s Drug, Education section has a budget of $130—140,000.28 Drug education

by Departments of Health seem to be no more than coopted window dressing.

It is not only the manufacturers and the distributors who influence policy and abuse but the media in which the drugs are promoted.

Nicholas Johnson, a member of the American Federal Communications Commission which is the official regulatory body of American media recently pointed out that: “ Prior to action by the FCC, and the ultimate ban of cigarette advertising, proceeds from cigar­ ette advertising constituted the

Politics in drug policies

Sotiety of Medicine, 12 th May, 1971.

7. Ibid.

8. T. Carney, Politics and poisons in Victoria — historical developments.

Unpublished manuscript, Monash University, Department of Law, 1972.

9. See Edwards, above.-1 10. Anslinger, H. J. and Tompkins, W. F. The traffic in narcotics. Funk and Wagnalls, New York, 1953.

1,1. Indian Hemp Drugs Commision 1894.

Report Government Central Printing Office, Simla (7 volumes).

12. Carney, op.cit.

13i Statement by J. E. Ingersoll, Director, Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs before the National Com­ mission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse, New York City, February 24, 1972, P-5.

14. Cited in A history of drugs in Australia, Part 1, The Digger, Issue No. 2, September 9-23, 1972. This article was based in large part on Carney, supra. [The bulk of the article was based on Allan Jordan’s research; Jordan may be contacted at La Trobe Uni., Sociology. — B.H.] 15. Circular no. 875 — SAE, July 22, 1942, from Resident Superior of Tonkin, Desalle, quoted in Associ­ ation culturelle pour le Salut du Vietnam, .Temoinages e t Documents français relatifs a la Colonization

française au Vietnam, P-US.

16. J. K. Fairbank, E. O. Reischauer and A. M. Craig, East Asia: the modem transformation. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965, 131.

17. Australian Year Book, 1971, No. 57, p.550.

18. (a) J. Delint and W. Schmidt, Who’s picking up the tab? Addictions, 1972, 19, p.58. Journal of the Addiction Research Foundation, Toronto, Canada. (b) McCoy, supra, p.4.

19. Victoria, Votes and Proceedings o f the Legislative Assembly, 1856-7, 356 and 379.

20. T. Carney, supra, p.5.

21. From Senate Select Committee, 1971, p.37. Based on manufacturer’s sub­ mission, stating usage is 0.63 tablets per person per day.

22. The first submission was to the Senate Select Committee on Drug Trafficking and Drug Abuse, presented K. C. Probert (Vincents and Nicholas), G. D. Houston (Vincents), K. N. Simpson (Richardson-Merrell) and W. A. D. Morgan (Richardson-Merrell), Sept. 8, 1970. The importance of the Unisearch survey is reflected in Senator Cavanagh’s cdmment, “I think that your case falls down if this survey is not substantiated.” Tran­ script of Evidence, Sept. 8, 1970, 4305.

The second submission referred to is : that by Nicholas, Reckitt and Colman, Richardson-Merrell and Vincents, the second submission to the N.H.M.R.C., July 1972. The survey and its conclusions are again referred to on pages 5 and 6.

23. Senate Select Committee, Transcript of evidence, Sept. 8, 1970, pp.4453-4 and 4526.

24. These calculations are based on the following: (i) 11-15% daily users, taking at least 2 tablets a day (2 tablets is conservative, since daily users tend to consume more jper day).__ (ii) Australia’s population, round figures: 13 million (12,728,461 at June 30, 1971). (iii) 13% o f 13 million = 1.69 million. (iv) 2,904.3 million tablets consumed annually (from Senate Select Com­ mittee — increased since that estimate was made). (v) 1.69 million, consume 365 days, x 2 per day, a year. 1.69 x 730 .= 1,233.7 million tablets a year.

Daily consumers may miss some days but as they tend to consume more than 2 tablets a day, a missed day may be made up by the extra tablets on -the other days. (vi) 1,233.7 million is 42% of 2,904.3 million.

25. Analysis of E. Davies and G. Kelley. A survey of analgesic and sedative consumption in Sydney and Brisbane.

Unisearch, Sept., 1968. The original question asked in this survey had categories, “completely harmless” and “harmless in small doses,” but in the report of the study, the categories appeared to have been combined, giving 75.4% saying analgesics were “harmless” (4524).

26. 27.-These figures taken from theSenate Select Committee Report, p.49.

28. These figures supplied during inter­ views in the Department of Health’s Health Education and Drug Education sections.

29. From Commissioner Nicholas John­ son, Federal Communications Com­ mission, prepared for delivery to the Annual Meeting of the National Coordinating Council on Drug Edu­ cation, Washington D.C., U.S.A., June 5, 1972. Reprinted in Los Angeles Free Press,,Oct. 13, 1972, Part 2, p.2.

30. McCoy, A. The politics o f heroin in Southeast Asia, New York, Harper and Row, 1972, p.61.

31. Report of the United Nations Survey Team on the Economic and Social Needs of the Opium Producing Areas in Thailand. Bangkok, Government Printing Office, 1967, pp. 59, 64, 68.

32. From McCoy, supra, p.263.

The statement quoted is based on the following: Interview, by the authors; with General Ouane Rattikone, Vientiane, Laos, Sept.

1, 1971 (Military commander and chairman o f the Laotian Opium Administration, first appointed, 1962).

Interview with Gen. Thao Ma, Bangkok, Thailand, Sept. 17, 1971.

(Commander, Laotian Air Force).

D. A. Schanche, Mister Pop, New' York. David McKay Co., 1970, 240-5.

The authors also spoke with local officials, opium farmers and soldiers in Long Pot, west of the Plain of Jars, August 1971, who confirmed Air America’s role in the local opium trade.

General Vang Pao, commands the C.LA.’s secret army in Laos. The U.S. Bureau of Narcotics (see McCoy, p.422) has reports Vang Pao has been operating a heroin factory at Long Tieng.

33. The C.I.A. documents were quoted by Jack AUderson in his syndicated newspaper column, Friday, October 13, 1972, U.S.A. 34. T. Carney, op. cit., p.5.

35. S. J. Cook. Variations in response to illegal drug use. A comparative study o f official narcotic policies in Canada, Great Britain and the United States from 1920 to 1970. Unpublished manuscript, Addiction Research Foundation, Toronto, Canada, 1970.

36. Opium Prohibition Act 1901 (N.Z.) 1 Ed. 7, No. 26.

37. Victoria, Parliamentary Debates, Legislative Assembly. 31 July, 1873, 904.

38. Victoria, Parliamentary Debates, Legislative Assembly, 17th October, 1905, 2123-4. Quoted by the leader of the (Opposition. The original source appears to be Roth’s evidence to the Commonwealth Commission, minutes of evidence, 4,34 Q. 29521.

39. Royal Commision on C/W Tarriff 1905 IV Parliamentary Papers (1906), 69 Off. 40. J. H. Plumb, The Listener, 19- May, 1967.

41. House of Commons Debates, Canada, 1907 - 8, p.5102.

42. S. J. Cook, Op. cit., p.225.

I would like to thank Dr Terry Carney, Dr Griffith Edwards and Dr Shirley Cook for the considerable assistance they gave in preparing this paper by their willingness to provide me with reports of their work. — R.W.

The Digger

February 24 — March 10

Page 5

Peggy Berman's book o f the Fuss:

Political pranksters' tactics k e p t quiet:

View from inside the Graft Machine On Thursday Peggy Berman’s book Why Isn't She Dead! was laun­ ched. The book could create a major public uproar —or it could be rele­ gated to the status of a book talking about the past.

After all, Victoria’s Abortion Graft Inquiry is over, one of the pol­ icemen found guilty is dead, another already out of jail and the other two are currently due for release.

This book details the corruption of a police force — a police force which remains almost unaltered. It establishes the culpability of a num* ber of policemen — some of whom are still classified as innocent and hold the highest jobs in today’s force. It tells of the prevarication of Victorian politicians and sections of the mass media — and they remain unchanged.

It tells of an abortion law which has corrupted so many of the people involved with it —and that law re­ mains unchanged.

Its dedication says much about the book — “Dedicated to the Lib­ eral Party Government of Victoria without whose studied neglect of the problem of unwanted pregnancy this book would not have been necessary.”

Peggy Berman started life as an illegitimate at St. Joseph’s Home, Broadmeadows. She was raised by her Irish Catholic aunt and uncle in Geelong, married at 16 years, gave birth to a girl — Helen —who was blind and deaf, spent three and a half years working to look after Helen while her husband was at war. At the end of those three and a half years Helen died and at 20 Peggy Berman was on her own.

From Geelong she moved to Syd­ ney to take a job at Crown Street Women’s Hospital. “ One young girl I befriended came to me in tears to confide that she had been taken to the lecture the­ atre, made to lie naked on a table beneath the gaze of dozens of medical students sitting in tiers while a lecturer drew diagrams on her stomach to show where her baby was and what would happen.

For this dark, pretty girl the psychological impact of this ex­ perience was great; indeed she seemed to feel that the humilia­ tion was part of her “punishment.”

In the eighteen months I was at Crown Street I saw droves of single women constantly coming and go­ ing, suffering agonies in deciding whether or not to keep their babies* Their average stay was - three weeks.

I I can see now what a lasting effect my experience at Crown Street had on my outlook.”

When Peggy returned to Melbourne she took a job in the cafeteria at Mel­ bourne University. That job changed the direction of her life for she soon met Norval Morris, then a senior lec­ turer in Law and now one of the leading criminologists in the world.

Their love affair lasted over two de­ cades. The involvement with abortion came several years later when she accepted a job as a receptionist with Dr. Lewis Phillips in 1954.

Her many years as a go-between for the police and the abortionists be­ gan soon after she meets Detective Sergeant “ Bluey” Adam, whom she had met in Geelong many years be­ fore: “ A few days later Adam rang to in­ vite me across the road to the seedy Carlton Hotel, using the pol­ ice command, “I want to see you.”

He greeted me with terse ques­ tions, “ How are you?” “What are

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you doing in the practice?” “ How long have you been there?” Rap­ idly he rapped out these ques­ tions, told me he knew Dr. Finks’ father, bought me a beer with a quick movement unexpected in such a large man, and then con­ tinued probing. My wages, reac­ tion to the job, marital situation, home address and other details were'sought. When he had satis­ fied himself that I was in no posi­ tion to confide in anyone, he ask­ ed a question that I could in no way anticipate, “ Have you still got that little book that I gave you in Geelong?” I knew at once what he was talking about. “ A Message to Garcia” —described by its author as a “literary trifle” —was a sensational success when pub­ lished in America in 1899 selling over forty million copies, but to me it was a classic example of feudal thinking, of employers hav­ ing despotic control and the anti­ thesis of my beliefs. When he gave me this essay those years before I thought it a strange document to interest a policeman. “ A Message to Garcia” was translated into all written languages, distributed to the Czarist Russian Army and then to every employee in the Japanese Government, soldier or civilian. In it the author, a homespun “philosopher” named Hub­ bard, preaches the virtue of un­ questioning obedience. The story from which it draws its moral con­ cerns a messenger sent from Presi­ dent McKinley to General Garcia during the war in Cuba. Garcia, the rebel leader, was in the moun­ tains and no one knew where to contact him. But a man named Rowan took the message and cov­ ered Cuba on foor in three weeks to get his message through. Hub­ bard glorifies this unquestioning servant: “ By the Eternal! There is a man whose form should be cast in deathless bronze and the statue placed in every college in the land. “ It is not book-learning young men need, nor instruction about this and that, but a stiffening of the vertebrae which will cause (;hem to be loyal to a trust, to act promptly, concentrate their ener­ gies: do the thing — ‘Carry a mes­ sage to Garcia’. It continues: “ No man who has endeavoured to carry out an enterprise where many hands were needed, but has been well-nigh appalled at times by the imbecility of the average man — the inability or unwilling­ ness to concentrate on a thing and do it.”

This could well have been Adam’s manifesto for the police graft ring, for it went on to say: “ Slipshod assistance, foolish inattention, dowdy indifference, and half­ hearted work seem the rule; and no man succeeds unless by hook or crook or threat he farces or bribes other men to assist him: or mayhap, God in His goodness per­ forms a miracle, and sends an Angel of Light for an assistant.” I was chosen as the angel “ It Is the survival of the fittest,” says Hub­ bard. “ Self-interest prompts every employer to keep the best —those who can carry a message to Garcia . . . And the man who, when given a letter for Garcia, quietly takes the missive, without asking any idiotic questions;, and with no lurking intention of chucking it into the nearest sewer, or of doing aught else but deliver it^never gets ‘laid off’, nor has to go on strike for higher wages.”

Adam suggested that I again read this essay. I had no need to do so, for I remembered the tale well.

Then he said, “ If Dr. Finks wants to go on working he’s got to pay fifty a month.” I said I would tell the doctor that Adam required fifty pounds a month, then Adam went on to say, “ When I ring I’ll be known as ‘Garcia’” . . . the moral of the book appealed so strongly to him that this was to be his code name and my role was Rowan, the unquestioning mes­ senger. So the blueprint for the next 14 years was being estab­ lished.”

The basic story is known. Peggy Berman eventually worked for an Bast Melbourne abortionist, Dr. rroup, but also passed on graft at some stage for nearly all the abor­ tionists. But her story tells of two areas which were left unexplored by the trials and the inquiry. One is the

weakness and double standards of the abortionists themselves and how one group based in Collins Street turned like cannibals on their col­ leagues.

“The Collins Street Machine” as she calls then; went in league with a new power group at Russell Street (police headquarters) to eliminate competition. The new police power group was knoy/n as the “ Irish Mafia” which came to power when Superintendent Frank Holland took over the Homicide Squad with the support of Detective Sergeant Kevin Carton, who was later to be Homicide chief. They took control from the “masons” , Jack Ford, Jack Matthews and Bluey Adam who had controlled the squad for many years.

The corruption of the force invol­ ved every policeman who was in a position to collect. Complaints from anyone about any abortionist were like open cheques when they landed at Police HQ. The graft ring just con­ tacted the doctor and named their price.

The trap was tight and inescap­ able. As Matthews said to Peggy: “My dear it is not what you say, it is what you say you say.” She adds: “ The full significance was that if he (Dr. Finks) didn’t pay he would be arrested as sure as th sun would rise, and on any possible charge, because once the demand is made and rejected

***

The illegal abortionists continued to operate right through the inquiry, except for well-known clients. *** But the most compelling condem­ nation of the whole system is the operation of the backyarders. “The point at last made,” says Berman, “was that I had been stunned to learn of Matthews’ deal with Wyatt [a backyarder operating with abortion­ ist Dr. William Fenton-Bowen], that he was protecting Wyatt at a price, and it was this — no stereotype re­ venge for love betrayed [Mr. Justice Kaye, conducting the Inquiry, had said Mrs. Berman’s love affair with Jack Ford had lead her to speak out] — that brought me to the courtroom. *** A deal had been done by a superin­ tendent of police specialising in Homicide, a man who had seen the bloated bodies of the victims of welchii, women mistreated by back­ yarders, and was still prepared to use their misfortunes for his own gain.

When I learned of this I realised it was the end of the line, and that I must take the first determined steps along the road that might lead to reform.”

There is still no reform in the State of Victoria*

This report reached The Digger anonymously — in the mail.

Details o f the advertisements supposedly placed in the Melbourne Age are obviously accurate, other aspects o f the story necessarily remain hearsay.

Some curious entries in th e Classified Pages o f th e M elbourne Age lately ' have been strangely ignored by th e m edia. F o r exam ple: even if the m anaging d irector o f General M otors Holden, w anted to sell his car in The Age, w ould he really advertise the, fac t th a t it ’s a F ord Capri?

And the excuse that the owner has been “recalled overseas, must sell urgently” hardly explains the sale of a “ Gentleman’s Residence in exclusive area” at 36 Anderson

SOUTH , Y A R R A .— Urgent private sale, outstanding well mantalned Gentleman’s Residence In exclus­ ive area- Beautifully decorated 5 bedrms. large entertainment area, staff quarters. &c. Inspection 2-, 6 p.m. Saturday 13th 10-12 noon Sunday 14th.

Owner recalled overseas. Must sell urgently. 36 Anderson St., South Yarra.

II TOO ftAK.U‘*Rus'seli ”'stf “Unfurn­ ished charming older style Home, 3 bedrooms, all facilities, superb location, floor covs., Ac. Avail­ able now on lease $45 p.w. In­ quiries ¿ 0 _5227. i p A L W Y N NORTH. — First-class i > Residence In exclusive area, 4 Ige. bedrms., 2 en-suite magnlf. rumpus rm. and other Ige. Hying areas, Luxurious kit., with most »nod. ftps., smaH SC. flat sultable staff or granny flat, Owutr moving : interstate, must self ur­ gently. 4 Chelmsford St

Three advertisements from The Age — January 13, 1973.

Top: The home o f US Consul J. Robert Fluker.

Centre: Sir James Forrest, Chase Manhattan Bank„ Bottom: A „ C Gibbs (GMH).

All ads. were bogus.

Street, South Yarra, which turns out to be the home of J. Robert Fluker, the American Consul in Melbourne.

The press silence on a whole rash of incidents like these in recent weeks is reminiscent of a like coy­ ness to report the doings of the Angry Brigade in Britain (see The Digger, Feb. 10—24). And indeed they’re connected: an unknown band here calling itself the “ Indo-China Solidarity Group” is also resorting to ungentlemanly tactics in political struggle.-'y Instead of sticking to convention­ al methods of political argument like napalm, phosphorus bombs, cluster pellets and tiger-cage prisons, this group has declared a policy of “harassing those who represent United States’ interests, both dip­ lomatic and commercial, in this country.”

According to a statement they circulated early this year, following on the massive bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong, they believe that “whilst those in power feel per­ sonally safe they will continue to be tempted into ignoring all protests.”

A list of prime targets accompany­ ing the statement included: “Melbourne: J. Robert Fluker, 36 Anderson Street, South Yarra, 26.1161 (American Consul); Sir James Forrest, 11 Russell Street, Toorak, 20.5227 (Chase Manhattan Bank); A. D. Long, 6 Ottawa Road, Toorak, 20.6137 (Pan Am); A. C. Gibbs, 4 Chelmsford Street, North Balwyn, 857.9780 (GMH).

“Sydney: Colin D. Goodchild, 8 Woodlands Avenue, Pymble, 44.7882 (Dow Chemical); F. C. Brandt, 14 Blues Point Road, McMahons Point, 929.2726 (Honey­ well).

Peggy Berman, outside Melbourne's Supreme Court, two years ago

Mountain folks' Co-operative:

School without classes Coonara is a school without a school building, with no set school hours and a student-staff ratio of six to one.

It emphasises involvement of family and community in education, depends to a large extent on parents for accommodation and transport (also for staffing, though there is one paid full-time primary teacher, and a group of 15 trained teachers who offer their services on a voluntary, part-time basis), and trusts in the ability and desire of students to regulate their own learning and to make meaningful decisions about their daily activities. Parents and volunteer teachers, students, businesspeople, artisans and other adults

a charge must follow to avoid any possible complaint of police extor­ tion.”

With the change of power to Hol­ land, the power of the Collins Street abortionists increased as the police protected them: putting suburban competitors like Troup out of busi­ ness. Ford and Matthews, however, continued to collect their graft even though they knew they could no longer provide protection.

Peggy details evidence that Collins Street doctors carried out abortions for women who had agreed to give evidence against other abortionists.

The police were acting against one abortionist and taking their witnesses to a protected abortionist in return for that evidence.

The police, working with their city doctor associates, were gearing up to arrest Peggy and her contacts.

And what was Jack Holland up to? Inquiry Chairman Kaye said: “ there is a body of evidence jus­ tifying the suggestion made by Mrs. Berman, with which Fordreluctantly identified himself, that Holland had given favored treat­ ment to complaints about Heath.” ... Holland was cleared by a subse­ quent police inquiry and is now a Chief Superintendent and Metro­ politan Crime Control Co-orinat.or.

A rash of nappies for Sir Jam es

contribute their time, skills and re­ sources to make Coonara a totally community-based learning network.

Coonara opened this month at Ferny Creek in the Dandenong, Ranges outside Melbourne, with 31 pupils aged from four to 12, after a year’s organisation. The idea began when an American couple, Meredith and Bill Bricken, advertised in the paper for children to join their own kids in a playgroup. Parents who responded soon began to talk about the possibility of starting up a free school as an alternative to the state system.

A sample week’s program includes reading at the local library, maths and science workshop, wire sculpture,

glass mobiles, mime and drama, iceskating, swimming, treehouse making, a trip to the National Gallery, scrounging for materials — paper at a paper mill for example — painting, writing and gardening.

“When a kid says “I really want to know how cars work” , we arrange to go to see cars being made?.’

When it came to getting the school registered and approved by the Education Department and the Council of Public Education, “every­ one was really, really helpful, very co-operative,” says Meredith. “ All they demanded was that we had a cohesive educational plan worked out, rather than just a haphazard thing.”

Coonara is incorporated as a non­ profit community advancement society under the name of Coonara Children's Community Co-operative Society Limited. Each family with

one or more children at the school must first join the co-operative society by buying 100 $1.00 shares each consisting of 25 cents paid in cash and 75 cents unpaid and un­ called liability. This means that each family has a once only expense of $25 cash and $75 liability.

The budget for this school year is $8,000 — $6,000 for the trained teacher’s salary, $1,000 for rental of halls and other meeting places, and another $1,000 for miscellaneous expenses. They’re sorry, but to cover these costs they find it necessary to charge fees — $180 a year for the first child in a family, $120 for the second and $60 for any others.

Meredith Bricken describes the parents as coming from a “really wide range — there’re teachers, people who don’t have jobs, and there’re professors and construction1 people.”

“Canberra: Walter L. Rice, US Embassy, Yarralumla, 731.1351; Colonel John C. Newman (Defence and Air Attache); Colonel Harold R. Dunn (Army Attache); Captain Harold K. Matthes (Naval Attache).”

Consul Fluker must have had his ’phone and driveway running hot lately. After an early assist given to his garden with a little defoliant mixture, he had his furni-' ture put up for sale, as well as the house and Cadillac (thoughtfully, the car ad. said “ no calls before 8.30 am” ).

Apparently the place is full of vermin, as Peter the Possum Man afrived in response to a ’phone summons and was quickly followed

by Argentine-ant specialists. Other callers included people delivering oysters and flowers, and a fire bri­ gade man to check out his fire equipment, reported faulty.

Sir James Forrest must have got a little hoarse explaining that his man­ sion was not for sale, and that hie really had no need for the six dozen nappies, beds and mattresses, flowers* and crates of liquor that had been ordered for him by telephone. The tow truck went away without the automobile carcasses supposed to be littering his back yard, and appar­ ently there were not really any bees infesting his tree, nor borers in the dining room table.

Various ads. offering attractive jobs must have kept Fluker, Forrest, Gibbs and Long busy answering their ’phones. Fluker might have wondered about the firm of Rice, Dunn, Matthes and Associates who advertised for a Social Secretary using his ’phone number (see Can­ berra names above).

Apparently the Melbourne Con­ sulate lpst a window around this time too.

The anonymous perpetrators have pitched their campaign some­ what lower than the bomb-tossing Angries in Britain.

Their letter says: “ Unlike the United States’ murderers, we will not bum helpless victims in their homes or destroy their children with plastic pellets.

We intend to make your personal life difficult in small ways, which will continually remind you of the horrors of the continuing war.”

Of course, the situation has changed a,little in recent days. Nixon feeds his bombing mania with sweeps over Laos instead of Hanoi, and has decided to conserve his energies for the task of putting back the clock, of progress inside the U$A itself, rather than trying to do it so vigorously in Vietnam.

However, we never know what the future has in store — maybe the old escalation itch will come upom‘ him again.

There are people in Melbourne who wish it to be known that people they consider murderers and their accomplices should not enjoy polite society as though they were accept­ able human beings.

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Page 6

February 24 — March 10

M ix it Fix it P lay it again Spiked on the cockspurs of the Stones

by Jenny Brown July, '72: Stones finish their grand, frenzied American tour.

October, '72: Contracts signed for Stone’s Touring Party to perform in Hawaii and Australia, and, in bet­ ween, the Stone-untouched Japan.

November, '72: More Hot Rocks released. Stones file Japanese visa applications.

December, '72: Jagger’s visa sent back. Permission to visit Japan re­ fused. Why? “There’s a.conviction” —jdope bust with Marianne in ’69.

Band records next,untitled LP in Muscle Shoals portable studio, King­ ston, Jamaica.

Nicaragua earthquake disaster leaves thousands homeless, including Bianca’s ma.

January, '73: Rolling Stones arrive in Los Angeles to play the Nicaragua benefit, from Jamaica, London and the South of France.

Jagger told by Japanese Consulate bust will keep him out. “ You’re too famous” they explain.

Threat of a tour member banned from Australia, but A1 Grassby, Min­ ister for Immigration, later ann­ ounces ban lifted.

Stones leave LA for Hawaii; play Honolulu concerts.

Early February, '73: Stones arrive in Sydney for press, then fly toNew Zealand to play a single con­ cert at Western Springs Oval, Auck­ land, drawing 35,000.

Entourage fly through Sydney to Brisbane. Two ounces of “ grass-like substance” found in fuselage of chartered ’plane carrying equipment Tuesday, February 13: Stones’ Brisbane show postponed because of rain. A1 Grassby spends an hour with the Stones in their Brisbane motel.

Wednesday, February 14: Bris­ bane concert played in rain. City headlines — “ Stones in Drug Row.” In Sydney, Grassby says to sen­ sation hungry reporters, “ Now listen, it’s very un-Australian to give a dog a bad name and hang it.”

Thursday, February 15: Part of entourage spotted at Melbourne Ali Akbar Khan (Indian sarod-player) concert after touching down at Tullamarine.

Friday, February 16: The Rolling Stones’ Melbourne press reception, Montsalvat. The infamous “ artists’ colony” in Eltham’s residential bush.

Tumbling acres of hand-laid stone castles, turrets, - stained-glass win­ dows. Fanciful curls of steps disap­ pearing like smoke-wisps round cor­ ners, archways, staunch wooden doors.

A peacock stares nervously from the roof of a wooden aviary as the crowd on the patio outside the Great Hall swells; two hundred people here today to meet London’s Stones.

Inside, liquor and conversation gush freely; outside, inthe February sunshine, Mick Jagger is at bay.

The omnipresent microphones and cameras close in on his short­ lived isolation, a pack of hounds on a cornered fox. Keith Richard, in an­ other nook, later gets a milder form of the same. ***

Earlier in the month the Stones sat together for the premiere Aust­ ralian press barrage in Sydney, answering a mass of inquiries —. stretching" from the insulting to the obscure —with temperance, toler­ ance, and (especially Jagger) amuse­ ment.

One television reporter seemed roused by Richard’s appearance. “ Now Keith,” he began, “you look like the wreck of the Hesperus.

Why do you dress like that, why do you want to wear those...”

Richard’s normally dolorous smoulder sharpened, he inhaled pain­ fully. Jagger interrupted. Smiling.

“The wreck o f the 'esperus? Wha’s that, a mythological figure?” “ Er no, it’s a, well, a ship that...” “ Listen man” , said Richard, “ this is how I want to dress. I could just as well ask you why you dress the way you do.”

“Why do you dress that way?”

Mick asked the reporter charmingly.

His laugh has something like affec­ tion in it.

But this reporter didn’t give up easily. “Are you expecting much violence at the concerts?”

Jagger’s face grew long. “ Well... the last time we ’ad any violence, I recall, was in ’69...”

Altamont?

“We ’ad this terrible chicken sand­ wich figh’ on a ‘plane...” *** As in Sydney, at Montsalvat the other band members drew less

Digger Brown, at Monsalvat attention than Jagger and Richard; Wyman, Watts, Hopkins, Price and Keys spend a good amount of their time drinking with busy-eyed tour manager Peter Rudge, and the rest of the entourage. “ New” Stones guitar­ ist Mick Taylor, who joined the band almost four years ago in ’69, is even less recognisable to Australians with his rarely-photographed face and his bobbed hair.

With an inexhaustible supply of booze, two or three hours of social­ ising does damage to . self-control.

Dinnertime TV viewers are scan­ dalised by the news broadcasts of interviews with the Stones, but at Montsalvat the press are considerably more pissed than their subjects.

They just happen to be on the right side of the cameras.

The Stones leave around 8.30 pm, in the sunset...the least-interrogated leaving last.

Soon the security-barraged twentieth floor of Noah’s new Hotel Melbourne (allegedly trying to take over from the Southern Cross as Mel­ bourne’s classiest dive), is as swizzled as it will stay for the band’s four days in the city. A blustering, boozy togetherness...a bizarre isolation.

Jagger, in his soft, light, eternaflysummer clothes (this time avocado and cream), sings a phrase or two along with the dusty country tape humming through his room — Merle Haggard and the Strangers — as Com­ mander Rudge talks over the Stones’ New Zealand poster with artist Ian McCausland. The bed is cluttered with Rudge’s portable files and notes.

Jagger regards intermittent visi­ tors with light curiosity; he looks wan but healthy, almost boyish with his hair cut away from his face and neck.

Catlike, he moves restlessly round the room. The heat, the pressure... won’t let up.

Later in the night Jagger feels sick and dead exhausted; a doctor diag­ noses dehydration and advises the singer should not perform tomor­ row’s concerts.

Rudge nearly has a coronary, and the ensuing arguments stretched well into the night. And then the morning.

But with a. band and an organi­ sation like the Rolling Stones, it’s like the old show biz adage, the show must..

Saturday, February 17: The day of Melbourne’s first Stones show, dawns hot and blue.

Down at Kooyong Tennis Stad­ ium, early-comers sweat and mil) on the outside pavements, in the glint­ ing, turbulent carparks; a scrambled bag of Stones fans, ten to fifty-five.

From the inside the stadium’s a festive, randy carnival. Lawn seats and half-moon tiers of hard-backed benches are already afloat with bob­ bing rows of hats, scarves, flowers, glinting sun-glasses.

The stage is skirted by a fall of buttercup yellow and white stripes, big orange beach umbrellas mush­ room up angular where the sun-roof fails to shade.

At 2.30 pm the grounds are gor­ ged and the show begins.

Madder Lake are playing to warm up all the Melbourne shows.

Only the Stones could pull twelve and a half thousand people thrice in three days —something like one in fifty of the total Melbourne popula­ tion — and show every sign of being able to pull more.

Madder Lake don’t waste their time, playing a good, tight, clean set of numbers, all originals, mostly off their forthcoming LP. The Stones’ set-up takes a rest­ less half hour.

Roadies in red-white tongue tshirts set up the gear, obscuring it behind fibreglass backdrop screens.

Judge Rudge is here, gesticulating at stage-side, dealing with a thousand crises.

Sound-head Gamble fingers the

G A IL W A L D R O N

controls on the mixing platform down on the lawn, a vibrant beachumbrella shading his emaciated form in a purple t-shirt printed “Mix It and Fix It” . Ah, leave it to the Stones...

On stage a dead calm falls like a thunderstorm shadow. Only the mighty black Leroy Leonard, ex-Fill­ more East, the Stones’ personal body guard, sits patiently at the back of the stage...facing the crowd, maybe even humming a tune. Waves of hassle-clapping break out in the aud­ ience: we want the Stones, we want the Stones.

Second pianist Ian Stewart, hair cropped and wearing golf shorts, walks across to center mike and murmurs the inevitable understate­ ment... “ Ladies and Gentlemen, the Rolling Stones.”

Grand applause as the eight run up around ghostly stage screens, three with guitars in hand, and here they are, pale, sweating, spangled in the Australian sun.

Looking vintage rock-star Deadly Nightshade, Richard Wyman. Charlie Watts, less extreme, but with paint­ ings of seen-it-all in his eyes and his hair streaked almost silver; Price and Keys, the hunkier Americans, per­ haps their worn and tornest yet; Taylor unobtrusively withdrawn, people staring at his short pale gold hair and beautiful hands.

And parading into view in a proud and sensual love dance beneath a twirling parasol: Jagger, shimmering and oriental in his silver-blue jewell­ ed Warhol pyjamas, like a Siamese fighting fish on the make, swirling

long, underwater, scarlet sash-fins from his sargasso pelvis. Naked, goldspattered chest, stiff waisted jacket (soon to be shed like a lurex snakeskin, glazed by the heat). See the ballet dancer thighs and neck, the head held high as a boxing cham­ pion’s. “ Awwright]" “ Brown Sugar”... right away it’s obvious that the sound is going to be superb. The mix deals out a Royal Flush: Richard’s turgid chords riding hard under Taylor’s lead —grranggdjanka-djangga-djrrang — fire in the blood. The drumming cleaned stark of tinsel, Wyman’s bass rich and always placed just right under Stewart’s*honky-swanky piano and Jagger’s rant.

The brass is tough and classy too,

through Price's trumpet and trom­ bone changes, Keyes’ sax switches.

Jagger pranks and sticklebacks between players and audience; com­ municator, transformer, interpreter of scattered energies. His mouth may pout, drop into that sweet orgasmic O, but his eyes miss nothing, he works with the band and they with him.

Those who see Jagger separate from the Stones see but an illusion.

The number jumps to a neat-cut finish. Many people stand to applaud, whistle up a storm, but many seem unsure of how to react. Overall re­ sponse is medium hot.

Grab a drink, light a quick ciga­ rette. The heat under the stage can­ opy is already inescapable, there’s no

Page 7

The Digger

Bill Wyman, with Ms Wyman He sat on a wooden platform over a small Japanese garden, listen­ ing, nodding, rolling a cigarette. It was nearly 4.00 am, Saturday morn­ ing. The first Melbourne show was to start in ten hours or so, but Richard, Bobby Keyes, Mick Taylor and friends only arrived at the trail­ ing remains of this party half an hour ago.

A couple of dogged gatecrashers slogged on at an endless game of ping-pong on the porch. Bakety-bok, love-two.

Mick Taylor’s features have mas­ tered the classic stone-cold Front, turning him to a David in English marble... He was immaculate in a softly-cut pale suit, talking subduedly to a host. She was apologising for the mess, the dying-away in the house — Taylor shook his head. “Don’t worry. It’s good to be able to get out of those motel walls. Even for just a little while.” ***

wind, dagger wipes a hand across his mouth for a slice of three stolen sec­ onds, takes in the crowd and intro­ duces Keith for “ Happy” .

That’s beautiful, strong and urgent, singing with the sweet liquors of intertwining slide and lead, the joined vocals of Richard and Jagger.

One of their best.

On through “ Gimme Shelter” , “ Rocks O ff’, “Tumbling Dice” , “ All Down the Line” ... a lovelv fazed complaint in “ Sweet Virginia,” with Jagger on harmonica; acoustic guitars replacing electric...but the strangling. heat throws shimmers through the audience, the glare begets multiple headaches.

Still, they are up and getting off on it, the Stones and godammit, yea, at last the crowd. Big bunches

Saturday’s second show starts at 8.00 pm, the Stones scheduled to appear at 9.00 pm.

Tickets, according to megaphoned announcements boomed in to Glenferrie Road at 8.30 pm, are still avail­ able; but inside Kooyong Stadium’s high wire gates the push is on, the crowd seems denser than before. The sun sets on Madder Lake’s closing number. The reception is off-handedly good. “ A nice little band. I’d like to produce them,” says Stewart to the sound crew.

Dense mirrored beams of arctic light stream from the lighting plat­ form, towering up at the rear of the venue’s tiered hemi-scoop of seating, to the stage. Chip Monck would’ve been there but either he blew too much anticipatory Japanese bread, or his Aussie visa was refused, which­ ever story you want to believe.

Anyhow, the crew miss him with his California Buffalo Bill moustache and the nifty shoulder bag he carries around which is really a rotating file.

And particularly, his famous lights and staging...

Kooyong’s Tegular spots of nightlights shine L \ m the crowd like duller jewels on Jagger’s costumery, but the half-light makes it all half a light show, eerie night.

Sound-crew have snapped on their rock-a-bye calming-effect tape (more Who; Rod Stewart and Jeff Beck on “Morning Dew” , from the Truth album; the Kinks’ “ All Day and All Off the Night” ), keeping the crowd, like a pack of excitable animals, from hearing each other’s restlessness.

Half-hour set-up, the announce­ dancing in the aisles, down the front, ment, and the travelling theatre of some in the stands... Richard switches the Rolling Stones is off again.

Jagger looks less human now, as to a hand-tooled wooden five-string the icy blue-white lights submerge guitar for the high-stinging intro to his silvery self and blanch his up­ “ Street Fighting Man” , and then a restyled, ruptured version of “Johnny raised arms and lips.

He’s traded his short jacket for a B. Goode” (the scolding chorus now goes “waah waah-waah-waah...” ) and thigh-long, pink-flashing ringmaster’s coat. Twelve feet of billowing white they’re gone, after nearly two hours, scarf, draped around his jugular and they’re not going to encore. A confused, excited crowd claps on, the pallor, trails behind his sleep lunar steps like nebulae. queries rising, chanting for more, “Brown Sugar” is the appetiser but they’re deserted. once more. This crowd is more worked up, drunker maybe and less *** inhibited under night’s anonymity.

“You Can’t Always Get What You Keith Richard looks something like death caught in portrait; his skin Want” , Jagger waving a soulful, sob­ bing tut-tut finger at the faces he can turns venom green in dull light and touch and all those thousands he his romany hair and eyes are as can’t, speaking out his mourning black as a crow’s breast.

Nicky Hopkins Story so distinct for junk, friendship, death and deception.

“ Love In Vain” ; strangely slowed down to a painful, howling stagger, with a slide solo from Taylor that was way up there with whoever you want to name in the annals of electricity; pure, molten, technically faultless, a heart-render. And, again, the yowling “ Sweet Virginia” .

But just like yesterday the fans yell for the oldies. The band baulk at the occasional request for “ Satisfac­ tion” . But they will do “Jumping Jack Flash” , with Jagger leaping out­ stretched like a hooked marlin, and “Honky Tonk Woman” , fulla lip and gesture and horny stripper’s jerk after The audience is getting pulled up

to its feet, up front the bitches dance and the hounds begin to howl.

The Stones get their teeth into the subtly deranged “Midnight Ramb­ ler” , sunk deep in the gluey abysses of blue light. Jagger pants into the harp, childish; kneeling curled over the stage, microphone clasped bet­ ween his thighs. He is praying, he is contemplating fellatio. Nothing he could do would seem...bizarre.

He slides down to his stomach, moaning, and gently into some tempting spiritual cunt...building it... building it. He gets slowly to his feet, still whispering threats, promises... and unhooks his studded belt.

The silence is gory. His curling

fingers rise and as the whip comes down, as it must, the band slashes out too, and the lights flood into red.

So delicate in its violence, it couldn’t fail to be erotic.

Jagger lashes the ground, WACK! and Richard’s slaps sharp at his strings; Charlie’s stick smacks down, the whole eight freeze.

Overhead, almost within reach, the full moon hangs centered, a Christmas glass bubble. Theatre of cruelty, luminous, globular, balance to Jagger’s silver immobility. *** If you push down into the thou­ sand spilt out into the aisles for “ Street Fighting Man” , or maybe it

was something else, who could re­ member, you feel the cockspurs of the Stones power as a live band. Let the sweat drip down onto you, feel the electric wriggle of other bodies against yours, turn vour face up as they upturn thpirs. to the stage.

Bill Wyman stares out into the rowdiness with a gentle calm, a ship far out at sea.

In deep green velvet, dark smudges of eyeliner on a white painted face, gaunt cheeks cupped by thick black bangs of hair, Wyman is a Fellini marionette.

Richard’s gypsy earring flashes through spikey twists of hair as he, turns huge vampire eves to Taylor’s hands, white on his guitar, building up some lashing solo, his thighs curved like sabres, his knees angled sharp over high-heeled boots. Two quick steps back to Charlie —who’s sweating now, eyes flashing quicker as his wrists.

Up like a greyhound comes Jagger jerking, pleading, jabbering at faces, looking them all straight in the eyes;. his urgent fingers screaming, his arms clasped with blue diamond brace­ lets, his lids painted sapphire...

He’s working so fucking hard, every last spasm of body and soul, he looks obsessed. There’s a purity, a self-oblivion in the man which is as­ tonishing. . .

Suddenly, in a ribbon-tying flurry of sound, color and light, the band is off. It’s easy to feel how the riots could start; the noise level is terrify­ ing and the crowd crush in an effort to escape their own gushing adrena­ lin, now with no focus.

The announcements begin, “Please, ladies and gentlemen, leave the stadium in ap orderly fashion...” but there’s too much of everything to do that “ Land of Hope and Glory” parades through the speakers, those With enough breath left in the tide of thousands, sing...sing anything to get it out.

Jesus! This is really it! A security crew of Bob Jones’ boys in the lobby, no permission granted to visit tfojgStones’ floor except by telephonirig someone upstairs, and a second Jones guy outside the lift door on that floor (the twentieth), was not enough — For the Saturday night after the second show, walkie-talkies are in use.

Rudge is making ’phone calk He’s trying to find out what time the sun sets in Perth, to see if the show need be postponed — assuming the weather was hot. “ Are you just doing it for the audience? They know they’d have to sit in the heat when they bought those tickets!” “ For the audience,” drpnes Rudge, leaning back against the wall, “and for the band.”

“The stage is shaded by a canopy” Dainty insists. “ Have you ever stood on a stage in that heat — and the heat was un­ bearable there today —and done what Mick’s done, in the middle of summer?”

“No,” sighs Dainty.

“Go and stand in a sauna and do an imitation of Mick Jagger for two hours, and you’ll know,” says Rudge.

The ’phone rings. It’s the head porter, who wants two Rolling Stones t-shirts — “We’re all out of tongues,” Rudge explains wryly — and also passes on the message that the junior maids would really dig it if Jagger came down to talk to them in the kitchen. “ Or even just walk through the foyer.” Peter takes down the man’s address. He’ll mail the tshirts from England.

Back to the Perth sunset... Dainty continues. “ We can’t postpone the concert anyway, because Joe Cocker never made it and the kids are para­ noid...” *** Charlie Watts puts an irritated face through the door.

“I can’t get a drink! They’ve closed everything!” He looks furious.

Someone jumps after him, solution at hand.

Another day, another dinner missed.. .

Photography: R E N N IE E L L IS Except where otherwise credited

a trade deficit incurred in Western Europe, an all over adverse trade balance, and an adverse discrepancy For those who d o n 't read newspapers; between the $1.1 billion put into foreign investment and the $0.75 billion taken out in dividends.

The British Prime Minister warn­ ed that the US dollar was no longer adequate as a reserve currency.

Two of the big car manufacturers suffered financial setbacks this year which they attribute to stagnating demand for their product, a continu­ US.) The Australian government ing swing away from big to small All kinds of problems with mowants Japanese buyers to rewrite ney. cars, higher wages and increased their contracts in Australian dollars, parte and materials costs. The GMH The US devalued its dollar for but apparently they are not interest­ net profit fell by 19% to $15.3 the second time in 14 months and Japan floated the yen, in an at­ ed at the moment. million and Chrysler had a net loss tempt to resolve an international An official of a leading iron ore of $3.9 million compared with a money crisis caused by the con­ exporter said it was inconceivable net profit of $4.9 million last year. tinued weakening of the US dollar. that Japan, which imported more The first legal gambling casino than $1,000 million worth of Aust: in Australia opened in Hobart to a The change of exchange rates means that Australian mining com­ ralian minerals a year, would not fanfare of free and adulatory pub­ make any concessions, although he licity from the mass media. There panies which have made long term thought it was prepared to see a were pictures of a smiling Tasmanian contracts with Japan in American few Australian companies go out of dollars will lose 24—25% on the premier at the roulette table the deals. (The parity between Aust­ business first. day before he opened the $10 million The 10% yS devaluation follow­ hotel-casino, full page spreads telling ralian and American dollars in ’70 was Australian $1.10 to US $1.05; ed an economic growth rate of 6.9% readers how to play, stories about for ’72 compared with Japan’s 9%, gamblers who won thousands in a it is now $1.00 Australian to 0.70c

night, and flash television specials of the gala opening... The federal government blocked the transfer erf 38% of casino shares to a group of Hong Kong investors while it ex­ amines their proposal and the Tas­ manian government has approved construction of a second casino in Launceston.

Strikers this fortnight in Victoria included funeral assistants and ceme­ tery workers out for more pay, while over 500 bodies waited in cold storage...soft drink factory workers out for a $10 a week increase as fizzy drinks dry up and the dailies run headlines about the Eucharistic Congress delegates going thirsty... !500—600 men at the State Housing Commission went out because of a strike by about 25 transport drivers...

500 men stood down from a water purification plant construction be­ cause of the strike by nine crane drivers...and Abbotsford Brewery workers went out over a claim for gumboots and pay for lost time.

Employment vacancies rose last month by 28%. It was the first January in 25 years of unemploy­

ment statistics recording that un­ employment dropped instead of rising.

Almost every engineering and applied science course in Victoria still has vacant places. A computer i botanist >with the CSIRO, Dr. Bill Williams, said that ineffective and unimaginative science teaching was at fault. Students were drifting to the arte, “ and I for one don’t blame them.”

Victoria’s fourth university will open in ’76 with campuses in three pro­ vincial cities — Geelong, Ballarat, and Bendigo.

The voting age will probably be lowered to eighteen for all federal and state elections — possibly ex­ cepting Tasmania where the govern­ ment hasn’t taken a position. The Labor governments of South Aust­ ralia and Western Australia have al­ ready lowered the voting age, Vic­ toria plans to before the state elec­ tions in May, the federal govern­ ment will introduce its legislation in the first sitting of Parliament, and Queensland and NSW will lower the voting age when the federal govern-

ment does...The federal government is considering a new polling system which combines the first-past-thepost and preferential voting systems.

Described as an optional preferential system, it means people could vote either for a single candidate or number candidates in order of pre­ ference, without making their vote informal...Federal election bounda­ ries would be redistributed ‘come hell or high water,’ the Property and Services Minister said. The electoral act would be amended to take people into account — ‘not cows, trees or haystacks’.

The Aboriginal black power move­ ment was getting support from re­ volutionary groups all over the world, according to Gary Foley, a prominent member of National Black Liberation. “ Now black Aust­ ralia can say it has, for example, 800 million Chinese on its side. This is part of the development of psycho­ logical warfare against white Aust­ ralia,’^ he told a conference on Australia’s Aborigines at Sydney University...The Catholic Bishop of Dar­ win said people in the Northern Territory wanted fewer lqud-mouth people in the South trying to help Aborigines. Speaking at the Euch'aristic Congress, he said part-Aboriginal people who tried to identify with full-blood Aborigines only con­ fused people in the north. They should identify themselves as Aust­ ralians instead of as Aborigines.

The Minister for Immigration, A1 Grassby, has ordered a review of Australia’s immigration laws with the aim of eliminating discrimina­ tion by race in the issuing of visas.

A Ugandan nationalist organisa­ tion which claims that 83,000 people have been killed by the Amin regime is planning to overthrow the General and his military government by arm­ ed struggle. The organisation, the Front for National Salvation, has sent a manifesto to foreign embassies in East and Central Africa saying that it aims to “stop the senseless murder, rape, and looting in the country, to bring about a new government which will safeguard hu­ man rights and salvage what is left of Uganda’s economy and nurse it back

education was not initiated in the Highlands until the 1950’s and the few of us who are educated are our first, not necessarily our last... Prime1 Minister Whitlam warned the people of Papua-New Guinea against in­ ternal division. He said Australia was no longer willing to be the ruler of a colony but said that an independent united PNG would get first claim on Australian overseas aid.

An Australian base in Singapore which has been secretly monitoring confidential radio messages to govern­ ments in South East Asia for the last few years will close down. The announcement of the closure was the first public admission that the base existed. Explaining the decision, Whitlam said that the previous Liberal government had decided that the base — known as the ‘electronics intelligence unit’ — was inapprop­ riately situated in Singapore and should be moved to Australia. His government was “ pressing on with that decision.” The leader of the opposition, Billy Snedden, wants the Prime Minister to treat a newspaper report in which the base was men­ tioned as “ the disclosure of a nation­ al secret which would be harmful to the national security” ...Meanwhile the US has been using trained dol­ phins to plant and retrieve detec­ tion devices in a foreign harbour to find out what fuel Russia is using in her submarines.

The Australian Citizens for Free­ dom wants the UN to set up a war crimes commission to try members of the Viet Cong and North Viet­ namese National Liberation Front for atrocities against the South Viet­ namese. Its president, H. J. Wright, apparently feels that the US has suffered enough because it has al­ ready tried and punished several of its own soldiers after investigating their South Vietnam activities.

More than 3,000 Vietnamese and American prisoners o f war have been released and the US and North Viet­ nam have agreed to build a new, im­ proved relationship backed by American aid...The federal govern­ ment wants to boost Australia’s de­ fence industry with orders for air­ craft, ships, artillery and sophisticate ■

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to health.” It is expected that Kenya ahd Tanzania, which are unsym­ pathetic to Amin, will support the Front. The leader of the Front says: “In Africa we talk continually about Sharpeville (in South Africa) where 67 people were killed, but in terms of human waste this does not com­ pare with Uganda.” ...Zambia has asked the US for aid in getting 1,200 heavy duty trucks and other vehicles to transport its 20,000—30, 000 tons of copper across Tanzania.

The request for aid followed Rhodesia’s closure of its 400 mile border with Zambia. Zambia has refused to use the re-opened border until after the end of white rule in Rhodesia. The US has said it has no foreign aid available but is helping Zambia to buy the vehicles from US companies. Copper sales account for 96% of Zambian foreign exchange earnings and 60% of total government revenue.

15,000 African and Indian muni­ cipal and industrial workers went on strike — illegal for black workers — in Durban for higher wages. White workers moved in in an attempt to keep essential services goings.

Independence for Papua-New Guinea would follow hard on selfgovernment which is due on December 1 this year, according to Chief Minister Somare...But a three page petition presented to the Aust­ ralian PM by the highland leaders re­ presenting the 350,000 highlanders who make up 17.5% of the Terri­ tory’s population, said the call for independence must come from the people, not the government. The petition said that “ the coalition government has shown itself incap­ able of self-government, let alone • independence.” It says “We and our members are naive in government —

W c fJ Z ed electronics. Plans include become ing a supplier of military hardware to South East Asia and Western Pacific countries...The French are planning one more atmospheric nuclear test before they go underground. They dismissed Australian protests as political rather than moral. However, French socialist leader Mitterand has promised to interrupt the teste if his party wins next month’s elections...

GARY YOUNG'S

HOT DOG PRESEN T "R O C K ‘A ’ BILLY BEATIN’ BOOGIE BAND" A NEW SINGLE ON A R M A C

February 24 — March 10

Page 9

The Digger

Story o f a convert:

Getting the m ag habit

by Colin Max Talbot Tony Gellel used to shoot up heroin, cocaine, morphine, barbitu­ rates, mandrax and almost anything else you can shove in an outfit, including the Vefo dog tablets, which no-one ought ever do anything with except maybe give to a dog.

After that hit Tony sat paralysed waiting for the final flash but an hour or so later the hand grenades stopped exploding in his heart and he found his legs weren’t really rivetted to the ground and he lived to hit up another day. In fact the same day, ¿id several times at that.

Tony in fact was a junkie with a big bad habit — 15 grains of morph­ ine a day. He says he now only ever admits to 10 because no-one believes him.

Now in fact he’s kicked the habit and his latest addiction is putting out a new magazine, which is ironical because, 1. he can neither read nor write; 2. it’s an anti-drug magazine, spon­ sored by Buoyancy, the original old folks home for junkies.

Well; actually Tony can read a little. The words have to be fairly simple, and the same with writing, which he can do a little, but mostly phonetically, in shaky block capitals, very slowly, and not very success­ fully, He is 23. Indeed he can hardly write. It’s no condition you’d think, for a magazine editor to be in.

This is how it came about.

Tony came over from Malta when

into dope, beginning the spike trail by injecting amphetamines. This later lead to the opiates (morphine etc.) and then to barbiturates, and as was noted earlier, anything that would go into his arm. He never did pick up a habit on heroin, mainly because there was never enough of the smack around to acquire a habit.

What with dope being not too hard to acquire over a long period, he eventually built up his morph, habit so that if he didn’t have, an outfit ready primed and waiting by his bed when he woke, then the day was off to a shaky start. He says he never popped pills. It was always the spike.

Round about 1967 he got invol­ ved with a" black magic sect andTTecame known as Evil Brown. In fact he is still known as Evil Brown around the Carlton pubs, although he no longer indulges in black magic rites.

He was a real hit in black magic circles and he says “ apparently I always was the chosen one.” Which means that he would be shot off into a trance and communicate, he says, with the spirits. On his arms are cigarette bums from five years ago, when lit cigarettes were held at his body and burned down to the butts to prove he was in a trance. The scars look like they would have definitely been the focal point of a lot of pain but he says he never felt anything.

Evil says he witnessed a lot of weird things when he was with his

Tony also claims he has fore­ sight.

“It’s like living a day behind,” he says. “ I know what’s going to happen in advance. I can usually dream the day before and it’s like a program of the day to come. For instance, I knew I was going to have this inter­ view today, and I knew I’d be really busy and have to fit it in. But still I know that my days are always going to be good in some sort of way.”

Tony says his dreams usually prove to be true in some way.

For instance he dreamt he met Jesus on the Nullabor, and Jesus had a huge black block of hashish and he told Tony: “ Here, dig this bread and* feed it to the masses. Turn the crowd on with this loaf.” A few days

later Tony met a person in Carlton who resembled the Jesus in his dream. The person had a big block of hash and was very free with it, and a lot of people were made very happy for a while.

Tony says that after he got lum­ bered with a habit. He got into things like acid and booze and grass to try and kick the habit. So he would be occupied for a while. By this time he was having to hit up a lot o f times each day, and if he couldn’t hit up, his body would turn against him and give him hell.

He worked in an abattoirs and had to hit up in the can six or seven times each day. But he still managed to do his job. Because of his habit he had been busted five times for pos­ session and administering. But the drug squad has been relatively easy on him because they knew he was a user and not a dealer. He has been to several psychiatric hospitals (Callan Park, Larundel and Royal Park) to kick his habit. But he has nothing but bad news from these visits. He says the doctors just shoot the

addicts up with downers and things to keep them quiet. When the hit has worn off, they feel just the same. In other words it’s just a time-Wasting procedure which gets nobody any­ where.

Tony has also been in Pentridge three times because of his habit. The first time he was put in remand, he says a warder tried to fuck him Tony says he was nearly dead on his feet and asked the warder to leave him alone or else he’d have a corpse on his hands. And he was left alone.

Throughout his addiction Tony never found it hard to obtain gear.

When he didn’t have it, he had little trouble “procuring” it. Finally after a lot of abortive attempts by doc­ tors and psych, people to get him off the habit, he decided to do it him­ self. So he isolated himself on a farm with his outfit and gradually brought his habit down from 15 (he talks of 10 only) to three grains per day. From that point he was able to get it down to nothing, which i§ what it is now. So he no longer has a habit. He never found not being able

to read a drag when he came to choosing his drugs because at one stage he worked in a drug company and became a “walking encyclo­ pedia” on the subject. * * Now Tony is editing a magazine.

It’s called JEP, named after an ex­ junkie friend of his. He is running the magazine from the Prahran off­ ices of Buoyancy, in Greville Street.

Anything he wants to write in the magazine, he has to dictate to friends, and they write it. Anything he wants to read in the magazine, friends read out, or else he spends a long time ciphering the stuff.

It gets to be a bit of a drag, not being able to read. For instance he has to use his friends to write letters.

He wrote a letter to a girl he knew, and it came out like... ^darling, I need you, I need to have you near me, and be with me.” All I wanted to say was “hey, get your ass down here...” So Tony has decided to try and matriculate. He is waiting to see is he has been accepted for a course now. If he doesn’t get matric., he

says it doesn’t really matter. As long as he can write letters to friends.

The magazine, he says will be anti-drug, but non-political. By anti­ drug he means narcotics, because he doesn’t . class marijuana as a drug.

He is going to write of his own ex­ periences, with help from his friends.

There will be poetry and cultural stuff in it, and any thing local. Mainly" it will be written by local people, which means help out if you have a poem or something you wish to be in the magazine. JEP won’t have much money. It will cost a little to buy, to cover costs of printing, be­ cause Tony is supporting the venture with his dole cheque at the moment.

He hopes it will be out within three weeks.

The editor can’t read or write1 which means he can’t be influenced by other magazine styles because he doesn’t read. And he has things to say about drug rehabilitation pro­ grams, like the methadone blockade program now in vogue. He says from experience, it is not only useless, bu' harmful.

ODE RECORDS presents THE LOU REIZNER PRODUCTION

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SANDY DENNY GRAHAM BELL STEVE W IN W OOD MAGGIE BELL ‘ RICHIE HAVENS MERRY CLAYTON

JEP editor Tony Gellel Bill Haley was in his prime and managed to avoid school so success­ fully that he wasn’t really there long enough to learn the alphabet and how it applies to words. He continu­ ed this tradition over here and mana­ ged to limit his education to non­ school. He lived in the Melbourne suburbs of Fitzroy and Carlton and finally at the age of 15, he left to wander Australia. At 17, he got

black magic friends. Things which he didn’t really believe were happening.

He thought maybe they were doing it with mirrors. But after a year or so of seeing it all happen, he took to believing. He still does believe.

Anyway a few years ago he had a dream which told him to lay off the black magic gear and he has ever since. He says he won’t get into it again,

t.

ROGER DALTREY JOHN ENTWISTLE RINGO STARR ROD «STEWART RICHARD HARRIS

Zappa tops Greats People who love writing lists, who love albums that have changed the world, love Zappa. That’s about the only clear thing that’s emerged from our erratic statistical analysis of the All Time Greats game we’ve been playing in these columns.

Zappaphiles have given the Moth­ ers 200% more mentions than any­ one else can muster. Way back there amongst the also-rans a couple of clusters emerge. West Coast USA dominates the field; the San Fran­ cisco team, Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead, Hot Tuna and Quick­ silver Messenger. Cheap Thrills also rates an honorable mention on the Western side as do Santana and Crosby, JStills, Nash and Young — Young on his own features with' A fter the Gold Rush as a Northern ring-in on the California side.

The Beatle family takes out third place with Sergeant Pepper a firm favorite. John rates well on his own but Paul (Rem) and George (Wonderwall) help put Liverpool on the map: After that it’s a necx and neck struggle between Jimi Hendrix, Jethro Tull and Pink Floyd (Ummagumma and Atom Heart Mother scor­ ing equally). Dylan’s Highway 61

Revisited is coming on strong and it’s around here that the Stones (with a great variety of albums) move in. Also in this class are John Mayall’s Turning Point, Led Zeppelin (no ap'eement as to which album), and King Crimson. The Super Session album runs in on about, this level too, as do Emerson, Lake and Palmer.

From hereon down things get a bit hazy — Disraeli Gears, Astral Weeks and the Traffic/Blind Faith nexus appear well favored. A couple of tipsters went for the same horse to take nearly every race — Velvet Underground and the Aztecs picked up support from this single-minded type.

Locals didn’t get much support, though Spectrum, Tully, Tamam Shud, Daddy Cool and Buffalo all received limited acclaim. Significant was the virtual non-existence of black starters — ladies weren’t much in evidence either, nor were there many of the mature performers.

It is to be hoped that interest in the All Time Greats will continue.

The Digger statistician claims that his analysis would be greatly fur­ thered by access to a wider variety of tipsters.

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Page 10

The Digger

February 24 — March 1*0

MELBOURNE FLYER Survival Centre

Survival in this society is often a dicey business. If you’re freaking out, having a crisis you just can’t handle, a bad acid trip, nowhere to stay or just no one around to talk to you or help you put, there aren’t many places in Melbourne you can phone up or drop into. The Link-Up Crisis Centre is

trying to get together something to fill that hole.

They want to staff a centre 24 hours a day that you can call into or phone up anytime, free service staffed by people who won’t rip you off or put you on a bad trip about yourself.

To get Link-Up going they need people interested

stmaktins THEATRE The PerformanceSyndicate present

in setting it up and they need information. As Robbie says “ Every person is a walking information service, if we could just get some of that together . . . ” You can phone Rob or Tony for more information 81.8584, or write to them at 34 Hawthorn Glen, Hawthorn, Victoria.

Blunder In Digger no 12 we mistakenly reported that Gay Liberation women are presenting Max Richards’ fNight Flowers at La Mama later this month. No-one’s offended of course, but a correction’s in order: only the director, Judith Kuring, is connected with* Gay Liberation. The others are uncommitted.

Discos -'Garrison: 'Fri 23‘ Feb: Guests and La De Das Sat 24 Feb: Rat Rancid, Chain, Friends Sun 25 Feb: Guests and Country Radio Thurs 1 Mar: Chain. Guest Fri 2 Mar: Garry Young’s Hot Dog, Dutch Tilders, Madder Lake Sat 3 -Mar: Blackspur, Matt Taylor, Greg Laurie’s Band, 69eis .Sun 4 Mar: Mantis, Healing Force Q Club fSat 24 Feb: La De Das, Fat Alroy, Warren Morgan, Lemonade Lites, Buffalo Drive. ' Sat 3 Mar: 69ers, Madder Lake, Barf, Brown Eye-Lites (Goodnight Pig Night).

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February 24 — March 10

The Digger

Page 11

SYDNEY FLYER Forum on The Manipulation Ali Akbar Khan in Australia: of Women by Society, speakers are Pam Thornby, Australia Party candidate for Continued from previous page Kooyong, Peter Riach, Reader in Economics at Monash, and Sandra Fitts,1 Jon Hawkes interviewed Ali sarod and tabla that held me potential of the Western music is written the from the Council for the tightest - such rapport and down in order that other performer who has to follow Aklbar Khan, Zakir Hussain Carlton Theatre, Faraday St, Pram Factory Back Theatre: Single Mother and her Child. people might play it, and the score. He felt this lack of and Susan Rosenbloom in such joy in finding it.

Carlton Fri 23, Sat 24, Sun new play by Jack Hibberd, 'Public Lecture Theatre, Old We had talked earlier of space for improvisation was that the process of notation Sydney: here is his conver­ 25 Feb: Percy, plus Blue Captain Midnight V.C., dir. Arts Building, Melbourne must simplify the concepts a basic lack in Western sation with them and some similarities between Western Water White Death. 7.45 pm. John Smythe, presented by University. Wed. 28 Feb, and Eastern music, and classical music. He talked of as they exist in the impressions of their music.

Thurs 1, Fri 2, Sat 3 March: M elb o u rn e U niversity mid-day.

Khansahib pointed out that composer’s head and restrict Bach’s spirituality and the Get Carter, plus Marx Bros Student Theatre. Remains of Khansahib is 51 and has L ib e ra tio n Night at the Opera. 7.45 pm. season: Fri 23 Feb, Sat 24, W o m e n ’ s been playing since he was Commencing soon at Carlton Sun 25, at 8.45 pm. Extra Movement: speakers are three. In India he is paid Faust, Carmen Theatre, Thursday Only shows at Guild Theatre, Beatrice extraordinary respect as Lawrence and Laurie Specials.

Union House, Melbourne p erh a p s th e m ost And watch for A Clockwork University: Wed 28 Feb, Fri Bebbington. Public Lecture a c c o m p lis h e d sarod Orange, The Candidate, 2 March, 8.45 p.m. Bookings Theatre, 1 p.m. exponent around. He sees Frenzy, Macbeth and De­ 347-7133.

International Smorgasbord the sarod, a teak-bodied liverance, coming soon.

Pram Factory: 325 Drum­ in the lower Dining Hall, off 2 5- m e t a l - s t r i n g e d the caf. from 6.00 till 9.30 Melbourne Film-makers’ Co­ mond St, Carlton. 347-7133, instrument, as the one on p.m.

Thursday 1 March.

347-7493.

Barry Oakley’s op, 16 Spring Street, which “ you can play 662-3418. Season of films play about Menzies, Beware Food from eight countries, an y th in g th e o th e r all you can eat for $1.50.

by Peter Tammer and one by of Imitations, dir. Bill instruments can do.”

Jim Wilson, both Melbourne Hannan. Tues-Sun at 8.30 Zakir Hussain is 21 and Take 22 Chamber Orchestra film-makers. Season closes pm till March 18. teaches the tabla at the in the Guild Theatre, Union March 18. Major titles: The St Martin’s Theatre: 44 St College of Indian Music that House, Friday 2 March, Curse of Laradjongran; A Martin’s Lane, Sth Yarra.

Khansahib has set up in mid-day.

Woman of Our Time (about 26-2188. Sydney’s, Perform­ California. He’s the son of Folk-singing and a campfire, ance Syndicate.

Closing Myra Roper). Supported by India’s legendary drummer near Union House, singers The Commercial, Where Are night of The Collector, dir.

Alla Rakha, and has spent a Danny Spooner, Roger and You Taking Me?, On the Christopher Muir, Fri 23 lot of energy in the last Ball, Pisces Dying, and Our Feb. New shows: Fri 2 Helen Montgomery, the couple of years in putting Langford St. gang. Friday 2 Luke. All by Tammer. K March Shakespeare’s The together, with Ashish Khan March, from 9.00 p.m.

Tape One is Wilson’s contri­ Tempest, Mon 5 March The (Khansahib’s son) a group King’s Daughter, bution. For details call Ann .'Marsh called S h an ti which Wookey 347-7044 ext. 561. adaptation of Hans Christian combines light Indian folk Andersen’s fairy tale; these New film: Carlton person music and rock. He has Michael Hudson, 28, has two shows alternate for the worked with Clapton, been given a $700 grant by rest of the season. 8.15 p.m.

Harrison, Santana, the When is a bookshop? When the Australian Film Institute No show Sunday night.

Grateful Dead and John La Mama: Faraday St, it isn’t. In this case, the 8MM McLaughlin, and has great through the Arts Council.

Bookshop is a sort of mail Michael is calling his film Carlton. Bookings 41-2735. respect for their music. But, order service operating out Angel and expects to finish Judy Kuring will direct Max he says, “this music has play Night of P.O. Box 152, Carlton shooting in March. Editing R ic h a rd s’ boundaries: it is enjoyable to 3053. and production time added Flowers, opens March. work within them, but The “bookshop” has been on, the film should be ready playing with Khansahib is set up by film-makers Fred for public purveying by completely different. Every Harden and Jim Clayden and mid-year. This is Michael’s time we play it is a learning its indulgences include litera­ third film, but first grant. He, experience for me. I learn ture and hard/software on daylights as a designer for M elbourne U niv ersity something new each time.” film and video, plus a wide ABC-TV in Melbourne.

Orientation Week holds Susan Rosenbloom, who selection of the whole Michael says the film is a promise for non-students as is a Student at Khansahib’s earth/systems/energy litera­ “sort of surreal fairy tale”, well. Music programs are not c o l le g e , has been being the dreams of a person y et se ttle d : contact. ture. accompanying him on the in three stages of life Activities Office, 347.3811., Harden and Clayden intend tamboura for two years now. to print matter and to make boyhood, youth^nd old age. Other attractions: She told me that there are pre-recorded audio and video 75,000 ragas and that “if tapes available, plus a general you know them all, you have service and exchange system at your fingertips the for film makers. understanding of everything.”

Once Khansahib decides which ragas they will play, they build from there. In the Melbourne Day Nursery, first part the sarod Heffernan Lane, City. Off tentatively explores the Lonsdale St, near Russell St. notes of the raga, then a Zakir Hussain, Ali Akbar Khan and Susan For mothers who want to rhythm is self up and the Rosenbloom on stage, Sydney Town Hall V>y Ja c k H ib b e rd fe a tu rin g Peter C u m m in s as M o n k O ’N eill shop without dragging small tabla joins in. The players “» . , a new Hibberd, a piece of splendid quality. . . kids along. You can leave look at each other, smiling a puts him once more ahead of his fellows as a play­ your child there for a lot, create pauses to hold wright . . effortless to watch, a balm to the s p irit. .” maximum of four hours at a constant the adjustments of Katharine Brisbane, The Australian. stretch, up to three times a their instruments, and then A U S T R A L IA N T H E A T R E . w eek.

Open MonrFri really begin.

Cnr. Lennox & Probert Sts, Newtown 9.00-5.00. Costs 30 cents for A dm ission $3 T uesday to Sunday 8 .3 0 p.m .

Khansahib talked the the first hour, 10 cents for B oo k in g s 6 6 3 -3 2 3 8 (S y d n e y ) day before of how “when 1 each further hour, 20 cents for lunch. Take spare play I see God” . He talked nappies and feeding equip­ of how after five minutes or ment for babies. Nursery so of playing he is swept THE DIGGER SCROUNGE DEVICE HAS recommends booking a away “ten thousand feet GRABBED ANOTHER 5 COPIES OF THE couple of days in advance: high” ; of how you could FANTASTIC SOUND TRACK OF “ 5 SUMit’s very busy. Phone play in the jungle ^nd as long ‘ MER STORIES” 663-4581. as you kept playing the animals understood and listened. In the Sydney Town Hall, sitting on a magic blue carpet on a two-foot high dais in the Searching for a voice: young middle of an empty stage, Melbourne poets and/or they communicated a lot of pretenders are invited to that intensity. Despite the come together at the busy visual background of Mayoral Chambers, Bruns­ the vast pipe organ and a wick Town Hall, every Disneyish lighting design, second Thursday to do what their energy dominated the they will. Next session is set space, they held the focus for March 8. Details are with the sheer intensity of sketchy, but it all starts their music. happening at about 7 p.m. If you read, write or listen, or It was the periods of A Fsm * r 0m> ^ M s u iv iu y am>J im Fromam would like to, there it is. sharp dialogue between

MELBOURNE FLYER

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Music to take you highest

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IM A G IN A TIO N

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Rolling Stone said: “Stunned, Dazzled, Beautiful Music, Awesome Beauty. ” Keith Colias said: “Your feet feel wet just listening to this.”

ON IMAGE BY HONK THIS ALBUM IS A BOOMER W rite to DIG G ER - 15 AVENUE RD., GLEBE, NSW, TELLING US WHO PRO­ DUCED THIS FANTASTIC FILM AND WE’LL SEND YOU A COPY WITH LOVE (AND LUCK).

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Supper Show, Feb. 24, is L IT T L E F A U S S A N D BIG H A L S Y (M) with Robert Redford, Michael J. Pollard, and lots of motorbikes.

M A R. 3 T H E O N L Y G A M E IN TOW N M A R . 10 L O C K UP Y O U R D A U G H T E R S

Garry Joslin heard the Melbourne concert.

We include his review in the Sydney flyer to link it with David Barnes’ photos, and because his knowledge of Indian music complements Jon Hawkes’ interview, giving a more comprehensive account than two separate reviews could provide.

How to review a great musician — let alone one from another culture? I could simply say: the great Ali Akbar Khan played his sarod superbly throughout his concert at Melbourne’s D allas Brookes Hall, Wednesday February 14. I could then go on to talk about something else, like the cricket, as Neville Cardus, the doyen of music critics, probably would.

But I won’t. Instead I’ll say the concert could have been better. At no time was the master fully extended, or rather he wasn’t given the opportunity to fully extend his interpretive powers.

The program was designed for a western audience, with four short items, a compromise that an n o y ed me.

Local audiences have heard enough Indian music, if they’re interested at all, to handle at least one long extemporisation. As it was, the concert was like one of the Introduction to Indian Music records made by Ali Akbar Khan and Ravi Shankar many years back, nothing like any of the superb concerts these men have put on overseas . . . and where were the rose petals and incense, Mr Hocking, eh?

In classical Indian music the full development of a raga may take an hour or more — this concert was truncated and rushed.

Despite all that, Ali Akbar Khan did play superbly during the first e x te m p o risa tio n , with incredible slide notes producing multiple moods within each note. And in the second item, a Gat, which is the last part of the development of a raga on traditional lines, he was joined by 21-year-old virtuoso tabla player Zakir Hussain. He plays with youthful arrogance, and with the impishness of the great player, Chatur Lai. While he lacks his great predecessor’s subtlety, he moves his right hand so rapidly he’d surely be, if they had cowboys thereabouts, the fastest gun in the east.

The dialogue between sarod and tabla is always a high in any performance and with feigned rivalry and one-upmanship in technique the two performers won this audience. Ali Akbar Khan played it quietly superior while Zakir Hussain adopted the look of a man who could match any ' complicated rhythm pattern with which the master might challenge him.

After interval Zakir

Hussain returned to give a demonstration o f tabla playing, via a tala of SVi beats. He explained that thousands of tala, or rhythm patterns, are learnt by voice notation — then ,tamboura accompanist Susan Rosenblum put aside her instrument to accompany the tabla with an amazing feat of hand-clapping in 5% beats.

Print RETRIEVAL - a cur­ rent events newsletter put out by a group of radical drop-out Catholics including ex-priest Val Noone. Con­ sists of summaries and reprints of articles from an eclectic selection of publi­ cations including Ramparts, Far Eastern Economic Re­ view, Hansard, New York Times, local papers and academic journals. Latest issue has information on

Women’s Commission at T e a c h e rs’ F ed era tio n Auditorium., Sussex St, on the weekend March 17 and 18. It won’t be anything like the lame-arsed, jump-on-thebandwagon Royal Com­ mission on Women that Billy proposed just before the last election. Rather, its model is a successful Women’s Com­ mission held in France last year, run for and organised by women.

Many different women’s groups are involved in planning this Commission; a general planning meeting to which all women are wel­ come is held every Monday night, 7.30, at Women’s House, 25 Alberta Street, Sydney.

Aboriginal protest in the north, local housing prob­ lems, a short dictionary of Nixon’s double speak and 18 pages on Vietnam. (30 cents a copy, $2 a year;bookshops and big newsagents, PO Box 51, Fitzroy, 3065).

EARTH GARDEN quarterly ‘concerned with non-polluted living and growing, the back to the earth movement, surviving in the city, the-bush, food and diet and the inner changes which follow when you are

The Commission will enquire into: Women as mothers (social assistance, social attitudes and prac­ tices, the right to choose); women as workers (edu­ cation, training, retraining, job opportunities, house­ work, economic and social abuse of migrant women, women’s creativity); women as sex objects (sexual ex­ ploitation, male supremacy); why marriages break down (families as they exist, divorce, the aftermath of a marital breakdown); other forms of discrimination (women as people, being black and a woman, subtle everyday discrimination).

The aim is to create an atmosphere where it will be easy for women to testify to their experiences. Each sub­ ject will be introduced by two or three women who

in tune with Nature’. Latestissue, the fourth, includes long article on bee-keeping, bee history, books on bees, how to deal with a sting and the healing values of honey; tanning hides; bread making; where to buy organic food, books on organic gardening, address of ecology action groups; the virtues of donkeys on the farm, by people who keep them; amazing uses for sawdust. ($1 copy from bookshops $4.40 a year’s subscription from P.O. Box 111, Balmain 2041).

What do you really know about sex? Why are so many women frigid? women’s liberation-produced booklet aimed at women who don’t enjoy sex and don’t know much about their bodies.

Discusses Masters and Johnson’s discoveries, myths about female sexuality, includes a diagram of female sexual organs and lists family planning clinics. (Women’s Action Committee, P.O. Box 23, Nth. Carlton 3054; Women’s House, 25 Alberta Street, Sydney).

Royal Australian Planning Institute Journal - special April issue titled Town Planning as a Learning Process. Reviews the science, politics and techniques of urban planning, critically examines Australian urban planning and educational programs, and makes proposals for citizen control of the environment. ($1.50 from University bookshops).

will talk about their own experience, then the mike will be passed round for any woman who wishes to speak.

The overall aim of the Women’s Commission is to discuss the social conditions of women as the background to specific demands.

For further information, phone Noia 587-1165, or Sylvia 649-1839.

munity Telephone Service (698-2652). A file to put learners in touch with resources they need — te a c h e r s , co -learn ers, materials and even insti­ tutions — also intelligence about the established edu­ cational set-up, how to rip it off, avoid it, fight it. If you want to share your skills or knowledge, if there’s some­ thing you want to learn, or if you want to help get the service on its feet, ring the A ltern ativ e Community number.

Gay Liberation Dance at the Glebe Town Hall, St John’s Road, Glebe on March 2, 8.00 p.m. $1.00 in and bring your own grog. Music will be made by Gandalf.

Women’s Liberation High School Group: meets first and third Sunday of every mouth, 2.30-5.00, at 25 Alberta St, off Goulburn St. If you want to join or find out what goes on, contact Jo d i Adams, Women’s Centre, 6 Ryries Pde, Cre-' morne 2090. Primary school sisters welcome.

Learning Co-op: project set up by Alternative Com-

Outrage: paradigm shift or revolutionary versus normal verbal works — in the Great Hall, Sydney University on Feb. 27. Poets, prose, film, singers, performers including Danko, Johnston, Leves, Moorhouse, Ravlich, Tipping and Wilding.

An Alternative to Inner Urban Expressways — a monograph by the Glebe Society, an anti-expressway

Insight: an organisation dedicated to mind survival.

Puts out a monthly newsletter, the sixth of which is due out on Feb. 24.

The group involved — about 200 at present — are all sufferers from phobias and anxieties of various kinds.

Disillusioned wi t h established treatments, they are attempting to work together on their problems.

Rick Johnstone, one of the founders o f the group, is into an analysis of freak-outs that takes into account, and largely holds accountable, the society in which “ madness” occurs.

He

lobby. It explains that inner city expressways are the most expensive form of transport in existence and proposes an improved public transport system to stop the intrusion of expressways into densely populated inner suburbs. Discusses railway station carparks, inner urban rail systems, road-rail interchanges, and radial versus grid transport systems. Booklet includes maps and comprehensive reference index.

(Glebe Society, P.O. Box 100, Glebe 2037).

writes in Insight 6: “The whole question of mental health ,is not simply a medical or psychiatric problem but a tremendous chase-your-own-tail type of socio-political problem which is being swept under the carpet by the powers that be.”

Determined to get their own shit together and wanting to help others in similar situations do the same, the group is eager to make contacts. If you want support or information, or to help or join, call Rick on 623.4060 or Rhonda on 38.6651, or write P.O. Box 429, St Marys, Sydney.

They’re desperately short of bread too, so contributions or suggestions in that department would be welcome.

Final number was an extemporisation of a raga in the light classical vein, a raga by the legendary Allauddin Khan (Ali Akbar Khan’s' father), who virtually developed the sarod. -It was an extraordinarily lyrical piece, le av in g my dissatisfaction with the c o n c e rt’s superficiality tempered with the simple enjoyment of it all.

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GREEN ELEPHANT REOPENING M AR.

Events 9 Spit Road, Mosman, Phone: .969.5186 The Classic Cinema has done it again! We've ob­ tained the first ever B A T M A N film produced in serial form in the early '3 0 's and we're screening it at our late supper shows commencing Saturday, February 24 at 11.15 pm.

A s an added attraction the cinema has arranged in conjunction with East West Airlines an all expenses paid holiday for two to Alice Springs as a lucky door prize with a special bonus prize for the lucky patron should he or she be dressed as Batman or Batgirl. All you have to do to be eligible for the big prize is simply be there.

affinities he saw with baroque. The patterns these players wove and the architectural configuration of baroque must be very similar.

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