Car boss, award-winning author join festival board
Exclusive: Three new faces will join the Adelaide Festival board, six months after mass resignations and the demise of the 2026 Adelaide Writers’ Week.
Former Mitsubishi Motors CEO Shaun Westcott has been appointed to the Adelaide Festival board, alongside an award-winning First Nations author, InDaily can reveal today.
The appointments come six months after Chair Judy Potter and three others were called up to “steady the ship” after Adelaide Writers’ Week – the festival’s renowned literary festival – was cancelled.
The cancellation came as the former festival board resigned following days of controversy over a board decision to pull a Palestinian-Australian author from this year’s Writers’ Week lineup.
Award-winning Bundjalung and Kullilli writer Daniel Browning was this week appointed to the new board, along with Westcott, who left the top job at Mitsubishi in December last year and currently sits on the board of the Industry Leaders Fund.
Browning has served on boards including Byron Bay Writers’ Festival, Red Room Poetry and the Sharing Stories Foundation. He works as an Indigenous Cultural and Creative Industries Professor at the University of Sydney and has also worked as a journalist, broadcaster and artist.
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Adelaide City Councillor Carmel Noon has also been appointed to the new board, beating out fellow councillors Janet Giles and Patrick Maher for the spot as the council representative. She succeeds Councillor Mary Couros, the council representative on the former board.
Arts Minister Kyam Maher – who became minister in March, after the state election and the Writers’ Week controversy – announced the appointments today.
Maher said the new members “collectively bring a wealth of knowledge and experience across sectors and areas of specialisation that are critical to the delivery of our treasured Adelaide Festival”.
“I congratulate all on their appointments, and look forward to working closely with the Board over the coming months and years to continue to bring this remarkable event to South Australian, interstate and overseas audiences.”
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Along with the new appointments, board chair Judy Potter had her tenure in the top spot renewed until June 30, 2027.
Potter said it was “a privilege” to be reappointed as chair of the “cherished South Australian institute” that is the Adelaide Festival.
Adelaide Festival brought in $62.6 million in gross expenditure for South Australia, spent by about 365,400 attendees in 2025, according to its Impact Report. The 2026 festival featured more than 100 performances with 700 artists across 20 SA venues.
Potter led the Adelaide Festival board from 2016 to 2023 and returned to the job in January after the cancellation of Adelaide Writers’ Week – part of the festival that celebrated 40 years in 2025 and brought in a record-breaking 160,000 attendances in 2025.
The former board uninvited Palestinian-Australian author Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah from Writers Week on January 8. The decision led to hundreds of writers pulling out of the renowned literary festival within days. Writers’ Week was cancelled the following week and Abdel-Fattah subsequently launched legal defamation action against the SA Premier for comments he made at the time.
The Premier consistently denied political interference in the board’s decision, but said he did not agree with Abdel-Fattah’s place on the program. In February, he said he would not change his position and that he was not concerned about legal proceedings.
Former Adelaide Festival executive director Rob Brookman AM was also appointed to the new board in January, along with Potter and 7News anchor Jane Doyle and Financial Services businessperson John Irving AM.
Brookman, Doyle and Irving remain on the board until June 30, 2027, alongside Tam Nguyen – a WOMADelaide board member and festival producer – who is serving a three-year term until 2029.
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