Q&A recap: Peter Dutton as PM ‘fills me with terror’, says Maxine Beneba Clarke

Australian politics is like the book Lord of the Flies, says prominent Australian author Maxine Beneba Clarke.

Australian author Maxine Beneba Clarke. Picture: ABC

Australian politics is like the book Lord of the Flies and the possibility of Peter Dutton as Prime Minister “fills me with terror”, a prominent Australian author says.

Maxine Beneba Clarke, who wrote award-winning memoir The Hate Race, told the panel of a special, Melbourne Writers Festival-themed episode of the ABC’s Q&A program that Mr Dutton could never be a bipartisan leader and govern effectively.

John Marsden, author of the Tomorrow series, Sofie Laguna, author of The Choke, Michael Mohammed Ahmad, author of The Lebs, and The Australian’s Trent Dalton, author of Boy Swallows Universe, also joined the panel, which discussed cultural appropriation, racism in literature and the role of writers in society.

“The idea of a Dutton PM just fills me with terror. I think that I’m still an idealist and I think a lot of writers are idealists. Our job is to reimagine the world or imagine a different world,” Ms Clarke said.

Is dog-whistle politics becoming a more successful tactic in Australian politics? Michael Mohammed Ahmad @TrentDalton & @slamup respond#QandA pic.twitter.com/h7cLjEr7G6

— ABC Q&A (@QandA) August 20, 2018

“You hope that the person who becomes PM is a big enough person that they can be bipartisan on the issues that matter and that the people who haven’t voted for them will still see them as some kind of a representation of themselves … It all just seems like Lord of the Flies again for me.”

Ms Laguna said she couldn’t believe it when she heard Mr Dutton was a contender for Prime Minister. “Can’t happen, but I said the same thing about (US President Donald) Trump,” she said. “I could be wrong.”

The panel grew heated when discussing Queensland Senator Fraser Anning’s maiden speech in Parliament last week, in which he advocated an end to Muslim immigration and praised the White Australia policy.

Ms Clarke said it was “purely about vote scoring”, while Dalton said the media should — and did — question the speech given by Senator Anning.

“It’s not new rhetoric. This is something that I’ve been hearing my entire life. I’m 32 years old and I’ve been an Australian for 32 years,” Mr Ahmad, who grew up in Sydney’s west, said.

“It makes no difference what kind of a Muslim you are. Good Muslim, bad Muslim, ignorant Muslim, moderate, radical, (you’re) still Muslim … My position is this: if you’re a racist, if you’re a white supremacist, a colonialist, Islamophobe and a xenophobe, you should be afraid of me because I stand in solidarity with the majority of people on this planet who will say no to you and we will stop the bigotry and hatred that you’re spreading.”

Mr Marsden responded that society has a “Messianic complex” and is seeking a leader to make the world a better place. “We can’t expect some extraordinary figure to emerge from the clouds and fix everything for us,” he said.

INVASION

Mr Marsden was confronted about his Tomorrow series, which, based around a fictional invasion of Australia by an undefined coalition of foreign forces, was described as a “paranoid white nationalist fantasy” by Mr Ahmad.

“With all due respect the language of the book and the implications in the book genuinely impacted and damaged the lives of a lot of the young people that I grew up around,” he said.

“When I pulled the words apart in the Tomorrow series, I did interpret a paranoid white nationalist fantasy about a group of coloured people illegally invading this country. And I always find that narrative deeply ironic because that’s what the white population did to the indigenous population.”

Mr Marsden replied he was “fine” with that response. “I’d rather have that than just write a bland book which people read and forget,” he said.

Mr Ahmad spoke openly about growing up in the Lebanese community in Sydney’s west in the early 2000s, when, he said, the community was targeted by media, politicians and other leaders.

“I can’t apologise if you think it’s confronting to read a book about Lebs, you should have tried being a Leb in the year 2000, at the height of the political campaigns around the September 11 attacks, the Skaf gang rapes and the way they turned all of us into sexual predators, gangsters and terrorist conspirators,” he said.

“I do remember (on September 11) a lot of the young men were celebrating. I can’t deny that or sugar coat that just to protect my community.”

CULTURAL APPROPRIATION

The panel debated to what extent authors can inhabit characters that come from a different cultural background, and whether that constitutes “cultural appropriation”. Mr Ahmad said only white Australians try to tell the stories of other groups.

How can diversity & insight be provided if writers can only to write about their own culture? Sofie Laguna & @slamup respond #QandA pic.twitter.com/P33m3AzyJO

— ABC Q&A (@QandA) August 20, 2018

“The debate about who is allowed to speak for whom is broken,” he said.

“We need to be transparent and honest about it. We don’t actually have a problem in Australia with Arab Australians going to indigenous communities and wanting to speak for indigenous people. We don’t have a problem with indigenous people coming to Bankstown to investigate and research Lebs. We have a problem in Australia where one cultural group — and it happens to be the dominant white cultural group — think they have a right to speak for everyone else.”

Ms Clarke said people can write whatever they like, and claims of censorship are often used when the book is bad. Dalton said writing is about stepping into someone else’s shoes.

“My day job is a long form writer of magazine features for The Weekend Australian Magazine,” he said.

“The only difference between a nonfiction and long form story that I’m doing, I’m not saying it’s them. But I’m stepping into their shoes, absolutely. From the Dalai Lama to Jessica Mauboy, to Bill Lawry, to Gai Waterhouse …

“We start getting too touchy about who we can write about — I know that’s bizarre — but Shakespeare did it alright. He wrote about a teenage girl from Verona. He wrote well about an elderly Jewish merchant.”

The program featured Dalton despite the fact he was not invited to be part of the Melbourne Writers Festival.

■ Trent Dalton will discuss his most memorable stories in special subscriber events for The Australian next month. Full details and tickets here.