Former Adelaide Writers' Week director Louise Adler attacks government and lobby groups over censorship

Adelaide Writers' Week has been cancelled and Louise Adler, who on Tuesday morning resigned as director, has described its collapse as a landmark moment and taken aim at those who engage in acts of censorship.

The event was called off after days of furore regarding the decision to cancel a scheduled appearance by Palestinian-Australian author Randa Abdel-Fattah.

The Adelaide Festival board issued an apology to Abdel-Fattah, which the author posted to Instagram to say she rejected.

"It is clear that the board's regret extends to how the message of my cancellation was conveyed, not the decision itself," she said.

During an impassioned appearance on 7.30, Ms Adler's sights were on politicians and lobby groups for their part in the Writers' Week cancellation.

She said the event's reputation had been "trashed" but that the controversy made holding the event "untenable".

"I think when we look back on this history we will see a masterclass in poor governance, an act of cultural vandalism, a moment when 180 writers said, 'We will not support censorship. We will not support the denigration of one particular writer,'" Ms Adler told 7.30.

"I think this is a watershed moment in the history of Adelaide Writers' Week.

"There are 180 writers that have withdrawn in three days, some of them because they support Dr Abdel-Fattah's viewpoint.

Ms Adler said censorship had been a growing issue in recent years and cited the Venice Biennale controversy as one incident, among others, to have come under the eye of government.

"We've had a succession of dramas of this sort where political interference and donors and lobby groups have been able to come in and have an influence and an effect on what is programmed and what is not programmed," she said.

Many of those campaigns have been in opposition to Palestinian authors or artists.

"There has certainly been a history dating back to 2023 of lobbyists, pro-Israel lobbyists, arguing against the inclusion of Palestinian writers in the festivals that I've directed," Ms Adler said.

"They were assisted and abetted by the Murdoch press in a campaign to silence particular Palestinian writers who came to Writers' Week in 2023 and conducted themselves with civility, respect, and empathy."

'Living in Putin's Russia'

Ms Adler said South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas was pivotal in influencing the board this time.

"Post-Bondi, when it was drawn to my attention that this woman was still on the program, I absolutely expressed my view and my concern around it. I made that clear," Mr Malinauskas said this week.

"But I also made clear in that same correspondence, crystal clear, that I'll be upholding the principle that I have upheld ever since I've been premier, and that is the absolute independence of the board to make its own decisions."

Ms Adler said he had been honest in airing his views but that they were different from his actions on a similar issue in 2023.

"The premier of South Australia has been absolutely up-front about his own involvement in communicating to the board of Adelaide Festival that he was strongly opposed to Randa Abdel's presence and invitation," she told 7.30.

"The premier … actually announced at the town hall event, with 1,200 people watching on, that he had thought about cancelling the funding of Writer's Week," she said.

"He had thought about his own objections to a particular writer's viewpoint, and he had come to the conclusion that if we were to be cancelling a writer — if a politician of the day or a government of the day was to cancel a particular writer — we might as well be living in Putin's Russia.

"I'm wondering what we make of that contradiction that, in 2023, he's able to be clear that he's entitled to his own view … but in 2026 we are not to have that kind of conversation."

Reputation 'trashed'

The reason given by the festival board in a statement for Abdel-Fattah's removal was it would "not be culturally sensitive to continue to program [her] at this unprecedented time so soon after Bondi".

Ms Adler attacked that statement too.

"The word salad of the statement issued by the board in invoking Bondi suggests a kind of implied dog whistle," Ms Adler told 7.30.

"I think that the invocation of the Bondi issue, of the tragedy and atrocity of Bondi … we have to think about that very seriously, because if that was not pertinent, why was it in there?

"If we were not raising perhaps the perception that she had something to do with a Bondi atrocity, it should never have been invoked in that very clumsy statement."

Abdel-Fattah had at one stage posted anti-Israel sentiment to social media, but Ms Adler said that was not relevant to her being invited to Writers' Week.

"Those statements exist, but she's not been asked to come to Writer's Week because of her social media feed," Ms Adler said.

"She's been asked to come to talk about a novel she's written called Discipline, a novel that's topical of this moment, and I thought [that] was worthy of a conversation."

Ms Adler remains hopeful the event will be resurrected in 2027.

"I'm devastated that Writers' Week has been cancelled, has been trashed," she said.

"Its reputation will have to be [rebuilt].

"But I feel heartened by the fact that all these writers came out and said, 'Freedom of expression matters.'"

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