I cannot be party to silencing writers, which is why I am resigning as director of Adelaide writers’ week |
The Adelaide festival board’s decision – despite my strongest opposition – to disinvite the Australian Palestinian writer Randa Abdel-Fattah from Adelaide writers’ week weakens freedom of speech and is the harbinger of a less free nation, where lobbying and political pressure determine who gets to speak and who doesn’t.
In the aftermath of the Bondi atrocity, state and federal governments have rushed to mollify the “we told you so” posse. With alarming insouciance protests are being outlawed, free speech is being constrained and politicians are rushing through processes to ban phrases and slogans.
Now religious leaders are to be policed, universities monitored, the public broadcaster scrutinised and the arts starved. Are you or have you ever been a critic of Israel? Joe McCarthy would be cheering on the inheritors of his tactics.
Artists have always been a problem for the state and interest groups but the confrontations have intensified as a consequence of the war on Gaza. Exploiting the rhetoric of social cohesion, crises have proliferated: the acceptance of Israeli government funding by the Sydney festival in 2022, the sanctioning of young actors in keffiyehs at the Sydney Theatre Company, Jayson Gillham’s cancelled concert by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, the initial removal of Khaled Sabsabi as Australia’s representative at the Venice........