Your Views: On Writers’ Week call and SA ‘on track’ for net zero
InDaily readers are fired up about a Palestinian advocate being pulled from the Writers’ Week lineup and news of SA being ‘on track’ for net zero despite catastrophic climate forecasts.
Responding to Shock Writers’ Week call as Palestinian advocate pulled from lineup
I am appalled by the Adelaide Festival Board’s decision to disinvite Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah from Adelaide Writers’ Week and by the justification offered for doing so.
The board explicitly states that Dr Abdel-Fattah and her work have no connection to the tragic events at Bondi. Yet it has still chosen to remove her based on vague references to her “past statements” and an unsubstantiated claim of “cultural sensitivity.” This is not a considered response to grief; it is an act of political exclusion.
By silencing a Palestinian-Australian Muslim writer whose work confronts racism and structural injustice, the board has revealed a troubling double standard. In moments of national tension, it appears that racialised voices critical of power are deemed expendable in the name of “community cohesion.” That is not cohesion — it is censorship.
Writers’ Week exists to host difficult conversations, not retreat from them when they become uncomfortable. Invoking government consultations, external experts, and opaque review processes only heightens concern about the erosion of artistic independence.
As a result of this decision, I will be boycotting the Adelaide Festival and Adelaide Writers’ Week until Dr Abdel-Fattah’s invitation is reinstated. I urge fellow writers, artists, and members of the cultural community to consider doing the same.
This decision will not be remembered as compassionate. It will be remembered as a failure of courage. – Matthew Hayward
To equate the legitimate rights of Palestine and its people with antisemitism is an error in comprehension of universal human and civil rights for all without exception. For any public organisation to deliberately discriminate against Palestinian individuals on the basis of this error compounds the existing problems and effectively condones the appalling injustice of the horrific genocide against the Palestinian people that we have all witnessed.
It shamefully panders to the abusive emotional manipulations we’ve seen demonstrated in politics and the media, which lead to and justify extremist xenophobic ideology and activity of all kinds. – Patricia Anne Ogilvie
What’s not to like about the laughter and affability of Adelaide Writers’ Week?
A lot because Australian author and lawyer Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah has been dropped from Adelaide Writers’ Week by the Adelaide Festival Board because it fears she will talk about the bloodshed and murder of innocents in the Middle East.
The board believes its role is to promote social cohesion. I thought it was to provide diversity of opinion and foster freedom of expression. The board has created a PR nightmare and jeopardised Writers’ Week.
As organisations rely more on external funding, it’s only “natural” that boards would become more “cautious”, she said, “and it’s counterproductive and it’s been devastating”.
Writing festivals should be a platform for the sharing of powerful stories: urgent, necessary and sometimes difficult. Such conversations have never been timelier. They are no place for the spineless.
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On the monument at the Pioneer Women’s Memorial Garden in Adelaide, you’ll find the words, “The hours vanish yet they are recorded.”
Let it be recorded this Writers’ Week that the right to free speech vanished. – Malcolm King
Your bias is showing. Again. Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah is a writer who has been cancelled from Writers’ Week. You labelled her as an “advocate” to bias the article towards the decision to cancel her?
Writer’s Week director Louise Adler declined to comment. You didn’t deem it necessary to mention she is Jewish? But it was necessary to label Dr Abdel-Fattah as a Palestinian advocate?
I’m a supporter of Adler’s because she is a member of JCA (Jewish Council of Australia). It would have been helpful and informative to note that JCA is a community organisation representing non-Zionist Australian Jews supporting human rights for Palestinians. But let me guess – you didn’t because it wasn’t the bias you wanted? – John Gransbury
I was considering attending the 2026 Writers’ Week, but now I will not after the committee’s decision. – John Cecchin
I’m very disappointed to read this. Right now, we need a rational discussion about this terrorist attack, which is quite separate from arguments for a Palestinian state. A big step backwards for Writers’ Week. – Bernadette Ryan
We bend our heads in silence, as we silence those who speak for the silenced. – Martin Cielens
I have always enjoyed Writers’ Week and am dismayed and disgusted at the board’s decision. I have found it difficult to come to terms with this decision because the ‘Week’ has always been a platform for ideas and discussion. I salute the writers who have pulled out, and unless the decision is rescinded, I will not attend either. – Anne Smith
Sorry, Writers Week is not a gabfest for ‘woke’ leftists to sow disharmony by parading their indignation of anything that does not fit with their agenda or latest group think. There are those that are interested in more than middle eastern politics or anti-semitism. – Simon Lovell
Every now and again in Adelaide, the cosmopolitan urbane mask slips off, and the underlying provincial, no-nothing mentality proudly displays itself. The Adelaide Festival Board has made a terrible decision, which will be remembered by people that matter around the world for decades. Malinauskas must act before SA’s reputation is damaged any further than it already is. – Michael Galvin
Writers’ Week must be subject to a strike by the public and protest lines peacefully put in place to discourage attendance. – Brian Jones
I sincerely hope the board will stick to their decision. Unfortunately, a large proportion of writers that attend Writers Week are left wing so it’s not a surprise many are protesting. Hold your ground. If we want antisemitism stamped out in the country we need strong and resolute people. – Denis Prodea
Responding to ‘Disturbed’: Claims SA government staff told not to investigate algal bloom cause
Just appalling. – Fran Grigg
Responding to Doctors refused to admit patients in mental health unit conflict
We had excellent psychiatric services early in my career as a psychiatrist in Adelaide in the 1970s, but by the late ‘70s, it was starting to go downhill. By the mid-1980s, the system was struggling, and the later closing down of outpatient care in the psychiatric hospitals and transferring it to general hospitals made it a mess with psych patients attending casualty and units being left aside to give priority to physical health.
In those days, I used to treat psych patients privately by bulk-billing at no cost to them, but eventually, the gradual reduction of PBS rates for such care made that impossible to maintain.
I quit my position as a team leader in the public system to go to private practice in 1976 and retired from private practice in 2009 when my then-wife was dying.
After a two-year break, I started going to intermittent locum work in public psych units in various Australian states on a part-time basis. My experience in that environment displayed the insufficiency of staff in those units, and in 2024, I quit working in mental health because of the limited ability to help so many patients and the expanding demands for ongoing, continuous self-education services that were taking more of my time than actually working. – Dr Ray Taylor
Responding to Why a federal royal commission into the Bondi atrocity isn’t the right option
I have to say Craig Emerson’s opinion piece had me vexed from the very first word. I couldn’t even finish the sentence for the confusion whirling around my mind. I should point out that once I overcame that singular barrier, I found myself agreeing with the former minister.
For me, the calls for a royal commission are baffling. I don’t find them “understandable” in the slightest. What do these armchair warriors expect to find?
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I can only assume that the call is off the back of the usual rage-baiting peddled by Murdoch’s cronies. Their “reporting” and half-witted editorialising are legendary and never cease to disappoint when grown Australian adults fall for it time after time after time. – James Sadler
What would you expect a Labor ex pollie to say? Never thought he was a leader in his time either. Existing Labor politicians in government are restricted in saying anything lest they get turfed out.
What have existing government have to hide? We need a Royal Commission now, or better still, a double dissolution and an election. – Noel Wendt
It was reassuring to read a reasoned commentary on the aftermath of the Bondi massacre, which effectively countered the mildly hysterical but understandable emotional response to the tragedy. The Richardson enquiry and the somewhat constrained NSW state royal commission should more than adequately examine and report on the key issues of public security and safety related to religious bigotry, extremism and terrorism in our community.
The enquiry will be focused and timely, with an interim report due in April. It should be able to avoid politicisation and ignore the influences of irrelevant diversions by fringe groups and the misplaced rhetoric from some sections of the community.
A federal royal commission would have been unacceptably protracted (perhaps three years or more), and would have had to encompass and deal with a wide spectrum of irrelevant material promoted and submitted by denizens of the darker corners of our community. – Warren Jones
Whilst it is unlikely that the families and the survivors of the Bondi massacre would accept that Dr Craig Emerson, a former ALP MP, has the moral prerogative to decide for them whether a federal royal commission is appropriate, there are a number of more specific contradictions, with respect, which serve to invalidate his opinion.
A federal royal commission running parallel with the Richardson inquiry should not create confusion, frustration and inordinate delay, as their terms of reference would be different.
In terms of delay, the Richardson enquiry, with its restricted terms of reference related to the effectiveness of the relevant federal agencies, is due to be released in April, while a more detailed federal royal commission could be conducted with timely interim reports, with the knowledge that more than 50 per cent of recent federal royal commissions have been completed within nine -11 months.
Such a provision in turn would make the more limited NSW state royal commission unnecessary.
Even more frustrating is his comment that the Albanese government has already acted upon the recommendations of a report on antisemitism by their special envoy, Jillian Segal, which has been in the government’s hands since July 2025 and to date, there has yet to be a formal response to her detailed report, which also contains immediate and practical solutions.
Sadly, his resort to obfuscation, using stereotypical arguments including implied political intrigue involved in the calling for a federal royal commission, along with his illogical and irrelevant comments with regard to the Netanyahu government, Gaza, the West Bank and Palestinian statehood, does not add to the debate.
The obstinate refusal of the government, justified on a series of cascading, unsubstantiated arguments made on the run, merely serves to reinforce the concern of the majority of Australians, of all racial and religious backgrounds, with regard to the sincerity of our prime minister and his government. – John Svigos
Responding to SA on track for net zero despite ‘catastrophic’ forecasts
So, Deloitte come out with some “study” which no doubt fits the narrative of whoever commissioned it. Not one of the doomsday predictions made in the past 20 years about the climate and what effects changes will have on the environment, or humans, has been within cooee of being right. Please stop. – Huw Morgan
Australians have not yet accepted the nature of climate change, where extreme weather events will increasingly impact daily life and infrastructure. This means that within twenty-odd years (2050), business as usual will not be an option.
Given the CSIRO projections, SA doesn’t need to put any effort into decreasing greenhouse gases. Rather, South Australia must put all effort into blunting the effects of the coming bushfires, sea level rises, algal bloom and dry, turbulent weather conditions.
A clear option is to discourage the increase in South Australia’s population because of the necessary building of new suburbs, roads and infrastructure to accommodate the larger population. – Michael Dwyer
It has been some time since your publication has given anything but biased articles on climate change and the hysteria associated with it. When will you actually invite experts such as professor Ian Plimer to comment on your stories or are you so left wing you fear casting a light over your propaganda?
And on top of this you plead for donations. Give me a break. – Denis Prodea
It is a great headline to achieve net zero for all our state’s power usage by 2050, including electricity, transport and industry. We do well by international standards, but digging deeper reveals that we cannot yet pat ourselves on the back.
Manufacturing is a major energy user, accounting for approximately one-quarter of the current total net energy use. Decline of this sector since the 1990s in Asia has seen our state’s manufacturing share of GDP move from 25 per cent to under seven per cent. We import all cars, most plastic, electronics and consumer products. The main source of manufactured goods is China. Electricity production there grows rapidly, yet continues to be based on polluting coal (62 per cent). SA emissions might look good because we gave them to China.
Another drop in emissions is due to ‘Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry – LULUCF’. It is wonderful to stop land clearing, but we see no decrease in lifestyle or consumption patterns.
Our state plans economic and population growth, which in turn will increase environmental pressures, such as loss of farmland to urban sprawl, emissions from building homes, and expensive motorways/tunnels to alleviate increasing car usage. – Stephen Morris
While expanding coal and gas. Net zero is not true. – Robert Hoepfl
