Malinauskas considered pulling Writers Week funding over controversial guests

The Premier has told the opening of the Adelaide Festival that political intervention in arts controversies could have chilling consequences.

Premier Peter Malinauskas considered pulling Government funding for the Adelaide Festival Writers’ Week after learning of anti-Ukrainian and controversial anti-Israel commentary made online by two of its guest authors.

However, politicians deciding what was culturally appropriate would be a path that “leads us into the territory of Putin’s Russia,” Mr Malinauskas said.

“At worst, it leads us to a future in which politicians can directly stifle events that are themselves predicated on freedom of speech and the expression of ideas.

“A path, in fact, that leads us into the territory of Putin’s Russia.”

Palestinian-American writer Susan Abulhawa, shown at the 2014 Palestine Festival of Literature. Picture: Rob Stothard/Getty Images

Speaking at the opening of Writers’ Week at Adelaide Town Hall on Thursday night, Mr Malinauskas confirmed that he would not attend any of the four sessions featuring Palestinian-American author Susan Abulhawa or Palestinian poet Mohammed El-Kurd.

SA Premier Peter Malinauskas. Picture: Russell Millard Photography

“Let me make very clear: when first I heard of Susan Abulhawa’s tweet suggesting that Ukraine was at fault for their own invasion by Russia, I can tell you that I felt a deep and personal sense of outrage,” he said.

“So I confess to contemplating removing government support for Writers’ Week. And to be sure, this may have been a politically expedient action for the government to take.”

After further consideration, the Premier said that to remove funding for Writers’ Week could lead to every arts board and festival promoter being “more concerned with risking the wrath of government” than creating programs with value.

Mr Malinauskas said his government had faced “unprecedented calls” to cancel the event’s funding because of Abulhawa and El-Kurd’s involvement.

“As well we know, we live at a time of intense hyper politicisation, even tribalism,” he said.

Palestinian activist, poet, and journalist Mohammed el-Kurd.

“There is no shortage of issues over which reasonable people can disagree, and it’s never been easier to amplify those disagreements until they become discordant and deafening.”

Abulhawa is scheduled to appear in person at two Writers’s Week sessions in the Pioneer Women’s Memorial Garden on Tuesday.

She has as openly defended Russian president Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and called Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky a “depraved Zionist with a house on stolen Palestinian land” and a “clown who is trying to ignite World War III”.

El-Kurd, who is due to take part via streaming from London on Sunday and Tuesday, has described Zionists on Twitter as being “sadistic” for setting fires in Palestine, and accused Zionists of having “an unquenchable thirst for Palestinian blood and land”.

He has also likened Israel to the Nazi regime whose genocide led to the creation of the Jewish state. El-Kurd’s tweets have been denounced as anti-Semitic by the Jewish Anti-Defamation League.