As a national voice for racial and cultural equity in the arts, screen, and creative sectors, Diversity Arts Australia is deeply alarmed by the decision of the Adelaide Festival Board to cancel Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah’s invitation to speak at Adelaide Writers’ Week.
Dr Abdel-Fattah is a Palestinian-Australian author, academic, lawyer, and human rights advocate whose work has made a vital contribution to Australia’s literary and intellectual landscape. Her writing engages rigorously with questions of identity, power, racism, belonging, and justice.
The decision to remove Dr Abdel-Fattah from the program, while explicitly stating that her work has no connection to the tragic events at Bondi, nonetheless draws an immediate and damaging association between her presence and that violence. This act calls into question her integrity without foundation to do so, and reinforces harmful and racist tropes that continue to position Arab, Muslim, and Palestinian voices as inherently suspect, unsafe, or destabilising.
The justification for this decision, framed as “cultural sensitivity” and “community cohesion”, reflects a dangerous trend across cultural institutions, where the language of safety and cohesion is weaponised to silence marginalised voices, particularly those who speak critically about state violence, human rights abuses, and the ongoing devastation faced by Palestinians. Far from creating cultural safety, this pattern produces harm, exclusion, and division, and ultimately makes cultural spaces less safe, not more.
The consequences of this decision have been swift and profound. Around 100 writers have withdrawn from Adelaide Writers’ Week in solidarity with Dr Abdel-Fattah, with NITV reporting a boycott by all First Nations authors slated to speak.
The removal of Dr Abdel-Fattah marks a dangerous escalation in a pattern affecting writers, artists, academics, journalists and cultural workers across Australia¹. It signals that participation in public cultural life is conditional, that speaking may come at the cost of exclusion, loss of work, or blacklisting, and that racialised creatives will be subjected to heightened scrutiny and punishment for views that fall well within the bounds of lawful, ethical, and good-faith expression.
Australia is a signatory to the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which affirms two principles directly relevant to this decision. Article 19 protects freedom of expression, including artistic and political expression, while Article 27 affirms the fundamental right of all people to participate in the cultural life of the community. These rights recognise the essential role of art, culture, and creativity in society, particularly relevant in this diverse nation. Festivals are a core part of our civic infrastructure, providing forums for exchange, disagreement, and critical public debate. The removal of Dr Abdel-Fattah from Adelaide Writers’ Week undermines these principles, and the widespread withdrawal of writers signals that this breach has been clearly understood by the cultural community.
Freedom of expression in any medium, including the arts, media, public protest, broadcasting, or academia, must be protected, even when ideas are unpopular, challenging, or confronting. This principle is recognised in Australian law, including the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 (Cth), which provides protections for artistic and public interest expression made reasonably and in good faith. The actions of the Adelaide Festival Board raise serious concerns about the erosion of these protections within publicly funded cultural institutions.
Diversity Arts Australia stands unequivocally with Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah. We also stand with the greatly respected Festival Director Louise Adler, the writers, First Nations authors, publishers, and cultural workers who have withdrawn in protest, and with all those who are calling for accountability, transparency, and the reinstatement of Dr Abdel-Fattah to the Adelaide Writers’ Week program.
We call on the Adelaide Festival Board to urgently reinstate Dr Abdel-Fattah’s invitation.
We call on the Adelaide Festival Board to affirm its commitment to freedom of artistic, political, and cultural expression, genuine cultural equity, and the protection of those freedoms within publicly funded cultural institutions.
¹ Recent examples include the removal of Khaled Sabsabi and Michael Dagostino from the Venice Biennale, followed by their reinstatement; the termination of Antoinette Lattouf by ABC Radio; and the suspension of Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah by Macquarie University, which was subsequently overturned.