Footnotes
*The author would like to thank the two anonymous referees ofLabour Historyfor their comments and suggestions.
1.Peter Coleman, Obscenity, Blasphemy and Sedition(:Angus & Robertson, 1961, 1974).
2.John Hetherington, Norman Lindsay: The Embattled Olympian(:Oxford University Press, 1973), 183.
3. Smith’s Weekly, 31 May1930.
4.Lionel Lindsay, Comedy of Life: An Autobiography(:Angus & Robertson, 1967), 134.
5.Hetherington, Norman Lindsay, 183.
6.Ibid.
7.Hansard, House of Representatives, vol. 124(21 May 1930), 1949.
8.Michael Pollack, Sense and Censorship: Commentaries on Censorship Violence in Australia(:Reed, 1990), 167, 171.
9.R. G. Howarth and A. W. Barker, ed., Letters of Norman Lindsay(:Angus & Robertson, 1979), 289.
10.Joanna Mendelssohn, Letters and Liars: Norman Lindsay and the Lindsay Family(:Angus and Robertson, 1996), 212.
11.Nicole Moore, The Censor’s Library: Uncovering the Lost History of Australia’s Banned Books(:UQP, 2012), 117–22.
12.Ibid., 117.
13.Details can be checked at Adam Carr’s election archive, accessed September2013,http://psephos.adam-carr.net.
14.Moore, The Censor’s Library, 120.
15.Stephen Payne, “Aspects of Commonwealth Literary Censorship in Australia 1929–1941”(MA Qual thesis,Australian National University, 1980).
16.Moore, The Censor’s Library, 119;Payne, “Aspects of Commonwealth Literary Censorship,” 41–42.
17.John O’London’s Weekly, 5 April1920, copy at CRS A425, file 59/24212, National Archives of Australia (NAA).
18.Herald(Melbourne), 14 April1930.
19.Hansard, Legislative Council Victoria, vol. 182(16 April1930), 328–29.
20.Ibid., vol. 182(6 May1930), 648.
21.Brossois to Collector of Customs, NSW, 23 April1930, CRS A425, file 59/24212, NAA.
22.Sydney Morning Herald, 19 April1930.
23.Daily Guardian, 23 April1930, copy on Customs Department file, CRS A425, 59/24212, NAA.
24.“Redheap: Segment of Life: Norman Lindsay’s Remorseless Novel, Which Gave Censors Concern, is Not Exactly Nice, But It’s Brilliant,” Mail(Adelaide), 17 May1930.
26.Justice Cockburn in Hicklin’s case, 1868; for a discussion of its application in Australia, seeRichard Fox, The Concept of Obscenity(:Law Book Co, 1967).
27.Garran to Hall, 5 May 1930, CRS A432 30/812, NAA.
28.Ian Reid, Fiction and the Great Depression: Australia and New Zealand 1930–1950(:Edward Arnold, 1979;Drusilla Modjeska, Exiles at Home: Australian Women Writers 1925–1945(:Angus & Robertson, 1981);David Carter, “Documenting and Criticizing Society,”inThe Penguin New Literary History of Australia, ed.Laurie Hergenhan(:Penguin Books, 1988), 370–89;Richard Haese, Rebels and Precursors: The Revolutionary Years of Australian Art(:Allen Lane, 1981).
29.Hansard, House of Representatives, vol. 123(1 May1930), 1329.
30. Adelaide Advertiser, 3 May1930, copy on file 59/24212.
31. Sun(Sydney), 14 May1930.
32.Hansard, House of Representatives, vol. 124(16 May 1930), 1882.
34.Hansard, House of Representatives, vol. 124(21 May 1930), 1949.
35. Guardian, 27 May1930.
36.Ibid., 22, 27 May1930.
37.Alan Gregory, “Peacock, Sir Alexander James (1861–1933),” Australian Dictionary of Biography,National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, accessed September 2013,http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/peacock-sir-alexander-james-7994;Alan Gregory, “Peacock: The Laughing Premier,” Victorian Historical Journal 52(February1981):3–30.
38.Don Rawson, “Keane, Richard Valentine (1881–1946),” Australian Dictionary of Biography, accessed September2013,http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/keane-richard-valentine-10663.
40. Creswick Advertiser, 18 April1930.
41.Ibid., 23 May1930.
42.Robert Darby, “The Censor as Literary Critic: Judging Fiction in the 1930s,” Westerly 31(December1986):30–40;Moore, The Censor’s Library, 33–35.
43. Sydney Morning Herald, 14 July1933, 12.
44. Smith’s Weekly, 31 May1930, cited in Payne, “Aspects of Commonwealth Literary Censorship,” 47.
45.Joanna Parkinson, “Australia’s Trustees: The Censors and Literary Censorship, 1929–1937”(BA Hons thesis,History Department, ANU, 1984);David Day, Contraband and Controversy: The Customs History of Australia(:AGPS1996). Day observes that Customs was “a traditionally Catholic-dominated section of the public service” (p. 102) and mentions the zeal of Brossois and the wider Sydney office specifically (p. 181);Moore, The Censor’s Library, 96–97.
46.Neil Lloyd and Malcolm Saunders, “Forde, Francis Michael (Frank) (1890–1983),” Australian Dictionary of Biography, accessed September2013,http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/forde-francis-michael-frank-12504.
47.“Report of the Royal Commission on the Moving Picture Industry in Australia,” Parliamentary Paper, no. 227, Session1926–28, vol. 4, part 2, 1373–409.
48.Ibid., recommendation 12.
49.Ina Bertrand, Film Censorship in Australia(:UQP, 1978), 68–71, 87.
50. Argus(Melbourne), 23 May1930, 9.
51.Australian Labor Party (ALP), Official Report of Proceedings of the 12th Commonwealth Conference, 26 May 1930(:Labor Call Print, 1930), 60–62.
52.“Red Heap Discussed: Strong Protest: ALP Conference at Canberra: To Lift Ban?” Labor Daily, 30 May1930, copy on CRS A425, 59/24212, NAA.
53.ALP, Official Report of Proceedings of the 12th Commonwealth Conference, 60.
54.Ibid., 60–62.
55.Coleman, Obscenity, Blasphemy and Sedition, 14–15.
56.This was the infamous “householder test.” Customs officers were instructed that “the term ‘indecent’ is to be interpreted in its wider sense … Collectors should be guided by their experience of what is usually considered unobjectionable in the household of the ordinary, self-respecting citizen.” At the time of theRedheapcontroversy, the Collector of Customs NSW interpreted the instructions in an even broader sense: the Department’s test of indecency was “whether the average householder would accept the book in question as reading matter for his family.” In other words, if a book could not safely be read by a five-year-old, nobody was allowed to read it. As Coleman comments (Obscenity, Blasphemy and Sedition, 13–14), consistent application of such a test “would have excluded nearly all significant twentieth century literature” and much else. See also Day, Contraband and Controversy, 102, 149, 181.
57.Richard Nile, The Making of the Australian Literary Imagination(:UQP, 2002), 250. It is a pity that Nile intrudes an alien “not” into Garran’s key sentence about law concerning itself with morals, thus reversing his meaning and intent. Such are the gremlins that bedevil the publication process.