conservative
Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy that seeks to promote and to preserve traditional institutions, practices, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civilization in ...
Australian literary, cultural, and political journal, which publishes both online and printed editions. , ''Quadrant'' mainly publishes commentary, essays and opinion pieces on cultural, political and historical issues, although it also reviews literature and publishes poetry and fiction in the print edition. Its editorial line is self-described "bias towards cultural freedom, anti-totalitarianism and classical liberalism."
History
The magazine was founded in
Sydney
Sydney ( ) is the capital city of the state of New South Wales, and the most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Sydney Harbour and extends about towards the Blue Mounta ...
modernist
Modernism is both a philosophy, philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western world, Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new fo ...
Ern Malley hoax. It was originally an initiative of the Australian Committee for Cultural Freedom, the Australian arm of the
Congress for Cultural Freedom
The Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF) was an anti-communist advocacy group founded in 1950. At its height, the CCF was active in thirty-five countries. In 1966 it was revealed that the CIA was instrumental in the establishment and funding of the ...
, an
anti-communist
Anti-communism is political and ideological opposition to communism. Organized anti-communism developed after the 1917 October Revolution in the Russian Empire, and it reached global dimensions during the Cold War, when the United States and the ...
advocacy group funded by the
CIA
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...
.
The name ''Quadrant'' was suggested by the publisher Alec Bolton, husband of the poet
Rosemary Dobson
Rosemary de Brissac Dobson, AO (18 June 192027 June 2012) was an Australian poet, who was also an illustrator, editor and anthologist.Anderson (1996) She published fourteen volumes of poetry, was published in almost every annual volume of ''Au ...
(she had declined to join the editorial board of ''Quadrant'', not wanting to be seen as "part of the right").
It has had many notable contributors, including Les Murray, who was its literary editor from 1990 to 2019, Peter Ryan, who wrote a column from 1994 to 2015,
Heinz Arndt
Heinz Wolfgang Arndt (26 February 1915 – 6 May 2002) was a German-born Australian economist.
Biography
Heinz Wolfgang Arndt was born in Breslau, Germany, in 1915, the eldest son of Fritz Georg Arndt (1885–1969) and Julia (née Heimann). ...
Hal Colebatch
Sir Harry Pateshall Colebatch (29 March 1872 – 12 February 1953) was a long-serving and occasionally controversial figure in Western Australian politics. He was a member of the Western Australian Legislative Council for nearly 20 years, the ...
Sir Zelman Cowen
Sir Zelman Cowen, (7 October 1919 – 8 December 2011) was an Australian legal scholar and university administrator who served as the 19th Governor-General of Australia, in office from 1977 to 1982.
Cowen was born in Melbourne, and attended ...
,
Anthony Daniels
Anthony Daniels ( ; born 21 February 1946) is an English actor and mime artist, best known for playing in 10 '' Star Wars'' films. He is the only actor to have either appeared in or been involved with all theatrical films in the series, and ...
David Flint
David Edward Flint (born 1938) is an Australian legal academic, known for his leadership of Australians for Constitutional Monarchy and for his tenure as head of the Australian Broadcasting Authority.
Early life and education
David Flint was bo ...
Dyson Heydon
John Dyson Heydon (born 1 March 1943) is a former Australian judge and barrister who served on the High Court of Australia from 2003 to 2013 and the New South Wales Court of Appeal from 2000 to 2003, and previously served as Dean of the Sydney ...
,
Sidney Hook
Sidney Hook (December 20, 1902 – July 12, 1989) was an American philosopher of pragmatism known for his contributions to the philosophy of history, the philosophy of education, political theory, and ethics. After embracing communism in his you ...
,
A. D. Hope
Alec Derwent Hope (21 July 190713 July 2000) was an Australian poet and essayist known for his satirical slant. He was also a critic, teacher and academic. He was referred to in an American journal as "the 20th century's greatest 18th-century ...
Clive James
Clive James (born Vivian Leopold James; 7 October 1939 – 24 November 2019) was an Australian critic, journalist, broadcaster, writer and lyricist who lived and worked in the United Kingdom from 1962 until his death in 2019.John Kerr, Michael Kirby,
Frank Knopfelmacher
Frank Knopfelmacher ( Vienna, 3 February 1923 – Melbourne, 17 May 1995) was a Czech Jew who migrated to Australia in 1955 and became a psychology lecturer and anticommunist political commentator at the University of Melbourne. He e ...
,
Peter Kocan
Peter Raymond Kocan (born Peter Raymond Douglas, 4 May 1947) attempted to assassinate Opposition Leader Arthur Calwell on 21 June 1966. He fired a shot at point-blank range through a car window, but Calwell escaped with only minor facial injuries ...
Douglas Murray
Douglas Murray may refer to:
* Douglas Murray (author) (born 1979), British political journalist, author and commentator
* Doug Murray (comics) (born 1947), American comic book writer
* Douglas Murray (ice hockey)
Douglas Thomas Lars Murray (bo ...
George Pell
George Pell (born 8 June 1941) is an Australian cardinal of the Catholic Church. He served as the inaugural prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy between 2014 and 2019, and was a member of the Council of Cardinal Advisers between 2013 ...
Roger Sandall
Frederick Roger Sandall (18 December 1933 – 11 August 2012) was a New Zealand-born Australian anthropologist, essayist, cinematographer, and scholar. He was a critic of romantic primitivism, which he called designer tribalism, and argued that ...
James Spigelman
James Jacob Spigelman (born 1 January 1946) is a former Australian judge who served as Chief Justice of New South Wales from 1998 to 2011. He was also Lieutenant-Governor of New South Wales from 1998 to 2012. He served on the Court of Final App ...
,
Sir Ninian Stephen
Sir Ninian Martin Stephen (15 June 1923 – 29 October 2017) was an Australian judge who served as the 20th governor-general of Australia, in office from 1982 to 1989. He was previously a justice of the High Court of Australia from 1972 to 198 ...
and
Tom Switzer
Tom Switzer (born 1971) is the executive director of the Centre for Independent Studies, a Sydney-based libertarian public-policy research think tank that focuses on classical liberal issues. He is also the host of ''Between the Lines'' on the A ...
, as well as several
Labor
Labour or labor may refer to:
* Childbirth, the delivery of a baby
* Labour (human activity), or work
** Manual labour, physical work
** Wage labour, a socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer
** Organized labour and the la ...
Bob Hawke
Robert James Lee Hawke (9 December 1929 – 16 May 2019) was an Australian politician and union organiser who served as the 23rd prime minister of Australia from 1983 to 1991, holding office as the leader of the Australian Labor Party (A ...
,
John Howard
John Winston Howard (born 26 July 1939) is an Australian former politician who served as the 25th prime minister of Australia from 1996 to 2007, holding office as leader of the Liberal Party. His eleven-year tenure as prime minister is the ...
Mark Latham
Mark William Latham (born 28 February 1961) is an Australian politician and media commentator, currently serving as a member in the New South Wales Legislative Council. He previously served as the leader of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and ...
and John Wheeldon.
After the publication of the 1997 ''
Bringing Them Home
''Bringing Them Home'' is the 1997 Australian ''Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families''. The report marked a pivotal moment in the controversy that has come t ...
'' report about the Stolen Generations, ''Quadrant'' published a number of articles critical of the report's methodology and conclusions. Professor
Robert Manne
Robert Michael Manne (born 31 October 1947) is an Emeritus Professor of politics and Vice-Chancellor's Fellow at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia. He is a leading Australian public intellectual.
Background
Robert Manne was born in Mel ...
, who edited the magazine from 1990 to 1997, claimed that the Howard Government's response to ''Bringing Them Home'' was influenced by and "collusive with" ''Quadrants position.
, commentators describe the magazine as presently having a strong
right-wing
Right-wing politics describes the range of Ideology#Political ideologies, political ideologies that view certain social orders and Social stratification, hierarchies as inevitable, natural, normal, or desirable, typically supporting this pos ...
bias and even engaging in
extremism
Extremism is "the quality or state of being extreme" or "the advocacy of extreme measures or views". The term is primarily used in a political or religious sense to refer to an ideology that is considered (by the speaker or by some implied sha ...
.
In the week following the Manchester Arena bombing, ''Quadrants online editor Roger Franklin wrote an article titled "The Manchester Bomber's ABC Pals", referring to the ABC's ''Q&A'' TV program. In it he wrote, "Had there been a shred of justice, that blast would have detonated in an Ultimo TV studio" and "...none of the panel’s likely casualties would have represented the slightest reduction in humanity’s intelligence, decency, empathy or honesty". ABC Managing Director Michelle Guthrie called for the article to "be removed and apologised for". ''Quadrant'' editor-in-chief Keith Windschuttle acknowledged that the article was "intemperate" and "a serious error of judgment" and apologised for the offence it had caused, and the article was removed from the website.
Stance and values
In October 1992, Dame Leonie Kramer, then the Chairman of the magazine's Board of Directors, discussed the "deep values" of ''Quadrant'':
# "the intrinsic value of cultural and intellectual freedom and of inquiry..."
# "cultural and intellectual freedoms, indeed negative liberties generally, depend upon an abundance of autonomous institutions and an open society..."
# "political democracy... support of particular democratic institutions, and a culture that accepts peaceful and democratic modes of government and change of government..."
# "liberal democracy, that is democracy that respects individual liberty... insists that government be limited: by other holders of political and economic resources, by legally protected private property, by free media, and most of all by the rule of law, that is the restraint and channelling of power by law..."
# "the virtues, and commonly the wisdom, borne by traditions in social and moral life... It has not pretended that traditions have all the answers or should be treated with uncritical reverence... It has, however, recommended that... long established moral and social practices be treated with respect and caution."
# "an economic order in which markets are allowed to work - within the rule of law (and the framework of property rights) - as sources of information, as ingredients and supporters of liberty and as facilitators of competitive private enterprise and individual choice...".
In 2007, ''Quadrants mission was described by its editor as:
In March 2008, the magazine was describing itself as sceptical of "unthinking leftism, or
political correctness
''Political correctness'' (adjectivally: ''politically correct''; commonly abbreviated ''PC'') is a term used to describe language, policies, or measures that are intended to avoid offense or disadvantage to members of particular groups in socie ...
, and its 'smelly little orthodoxies. Regular contributors often support conspiracy theories viz that covid-19 has mild impact and that global warming is a hoax, and the 2020 US election was fraudulent.
, the magazine simply describes itself as "Australia's most open minded publication"; while its home page includes articles critical of climate scientists, the ABC and "the Left's triumphal anti-clericalism."
Hoax
In January 2009, ''Quadrant'' unknowingly published a hoax article. Its author, writer, editor and activist Katherine Wilson, stated that she aimed to show that the magazine and editor Keith Windschuttle had right-wing bias. Wilson claimed Windschuttle and ''Quadrant'' would publish an inaccurate article and not check its footnotes or authenticity if it met his preconceptions. Using the pseudonym "biotechnologist Dr Sharon Gould", Wilson submitted an article claiming that
CSIRO
The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) is an Australian Government agency responsible for scientific research.
CSIRO works with leading organisations around the world. From its headquarters in Canberra, CSIRO ...
had planned to produce food crops engineered with human genes.
Editors
Management structure
Editorial staff
* Editor ''Quadrant'' magazine: Keith Windschuttle
* Editor, International, ''Quadrant'' magazine: John O'Sullivan
* Editor, ''Quadrant'' Online: Roger Franklin
* Literary Editor: Barry Spurr"Barry Spurr appointed Quadrant's new Literary Editor", ''Quadrant'', March 2019, p. 3.
* Deputy Editor: George Thomas
See also
*
List of literary magazines
A ''list'' is any set of items in a row. List or lists may also refer to:
People
* List (surname)
Organizations
* List College, an undergraduate division of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America
* SC Germania List, German rugby unio ...
Cassandra Pybus
Cassandra Jean Pybus (born 29 September 1947) is an Australian historian and writer. She is a former professorial fellow in history at the University of Sydney, and has published extensively on Australian and American history.
Pybus was born i ...