Yup. I don't believe a word of it. I think Labor are cynically dangling false hope in front of the queer community so that we'll enthusiastically support the current legislation, and will then conveniently "forget" to follow through later.

Okay I think we're done with this conversation. I don't believe you're approaching this in good faith.

Regarding the AWW timeline itself, the linked article by Nick Feik gives an overview.

More generally, I think you are making the same mistake the Board did in linking her views on Gaza to the attacks in Bondi. That's a stretch, and it's rather uncharitable given what her people have endured

Tempering rhetoric? Yes, absolutely. If that were the goal, though, the Board went about it in the worst possible way. A simpler approach might have been to *ask* speakers to take care in their remarks? In any case, the document trail shows the push against her started months before Bondi happened

It doesn't matter what she believes in this respect. Plenty of people have spoken at AWW while holding peculiar views. What hasn't happened before is the AF Board deciding to apply different criteria for a Palestinian author than they have applied to other authors.

She wrote to the AF Board requesting that Thomas Friedman be disinvited after comparing various middle eastern countries to vermin etc. In that instance the Board refused to disinvite the speaker

Oh fuck me. I spoke too soon. Malinaukus deciding to open himself up to a defamation suit in the denoument. Of course he did. Truly abysmal ending to the dismal story.

All up, it took only 5 days for one idiotic Board decision to destroy a beloved institution, after what looks like months of political interference in the background. An act of completely self-inflicted vandalism on Adelaide. The city deserves better leadership than this

Nice write up. It's truly astonishing that an SA premier would do any of this. Even as a sports guy, he has to understand the importance of the Festival and AWW to the city. Batshit decision making

Huge fan of your writing. I totally understand how long the allure of twitter keeps people going back there: I had to get a friend to help me lock myself out of my damned account there in order to prevent me trying to return to the bad place :/

The fact is, nobody has even *tried* to make a substantive argument against her inclusion. It's just vibes and borderline-defamatory insinuations. The Palestinian lady makes them uncomfortable. That's the entirety of their case against her

Personally I'm not a fan of the "we have to let everyone have a platform" argument. I think some people absolutely shouldn't be given a megaphone, in fact. But if you want to argue that Friedman is a fit and proper person to speak at AWW and Abdel-Fattah isn't, then you have to argue *that* case

For the life of me I cannot even imagine what the Board was thinking. The most charitable interpretation I can come up with is that they are so utterly clueless about the arts that they didn't really understand what would happen, and have no business overseeing the Festival.

Just wanted to add a thank you here from an ex-Adelaidean who has been living in Sydney for a long time now. I've genuinely appreciated your posts on the AWW story: they've added a lot of context I might otherwise have missed.

That's been my experience. There's almost always a genuine external cause to my anxiety / depression. Something really is out there that would make anyone have a negative emotional reaction. Whats hard is recognising that my reaction is intense and debilitating in ways that others don't experience

i think what really gets under my skin in this case is that nobody is even prepared to justify the decision to ban her. no specific action or opinion of hers has been named. she's just gone because of "cultural sensitivities". apparently that's all that's needed now :/