‘Vicious assault’: Ousted writer threatens defamation action against South Australian premier

The Palestinian-Australian writer removed from Adelaide Writers’ Week by the Adelaide Festival board says she is taking legal action against the South Australian premier, accusing him of defaming her by suggesting she was an “extremist terrorist sympathiser”.

Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah said on Wednesday that her lawyers had sent a concerns notice to Peter Malinauskas over comments he made at a news conference on Tuesday.

Her legal action comes after a dramatic few days in South Australia, with the cancellation on Tuesday of Adelaide Writers’ Week, and the resignation of its director Louise Adler, after 180 authors quit the line-up following a decision by members of the Adelaide Festival board to remove the academic from the literary festival’s program.

Adler told this masthead on Wednesday she couldn’t understand why the premier had backflipped when in the past he has supported the right of writers’ week to program whomever it chose.

She recalled that Malinauskas had found Palestinian-American writer Susan Abulhawa’s social media commentary to be offensive in 2023 after she had been critical of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. “Of course, he is perfectly entitled to that view, indeed in this democratic country he can even choose not to attend her event,” Adler said.

“His problem is that in front of 1200 people in the Adelaide Town Hall, he declared that if politicians were to take on the role of arts curators we might as well be living in Putin’s Russia. He could have adopted exactly the same response to Randa Abdel-Fattah’s appearance.”

The Adelaide Festival board announced last week that while it was not suggesting “in any way” that Abdel-Fattah or her writing had any connection with the Bondi attack, given her past statements, “it would not be culturally sensitive to continue to program her at this unprecedented time so soon after Bondi”.

Conservative Jewish groups previously criticised the Palestinian writer for social media posts critical of Israel.

In a post on Instagram on Wednesday, Abdel-Fattah wrote that Malinauskas’ comments “suggested I am an extremist terrorist sympathiser and directly linked me to the Bondi atrocity. This was a vicious assault on me”.

“For the past week since I was cancelled by the Adelaide Festival board, the South Premier Peter Malinauskas has made many public statements about me and my character,” she wrote on Instagram.

“We have never met and he has never attempted to contact me. He knows nothing about me, beyond what he has been told by the Murdoch press and the pro-Israel lobby, which he has apparently accepted without question.”

On Tuesday, Malinauskas was asked during a press conference whether there was any political interference in the festival board’s decision to remove Abdel-Fattah from Adelaide Writers’ Week.

“Can you imagine if a far-right Zionist walked into a Sydney mosque and murdered 15 people?” the premier told reporters. “Can you imagine that as premier of this state, I would actively support a far-right Zionist going to writers’ week and speaking hateful rhetoric towards Islamic people? Of course I wouldn’t.

“The reverse is happening in this instance, and I’m not going to support that either, and that’s a reasonable position for me to have.”

Speaking in response to questions about the defamation notice – which at that stage he had not seen – on Wednesday, Malinauskas said “all of my remarks and actions have been founded by a desire for compassion … and in the pursuit of decency”.

Asked if he owed Abdel-Fattah an apology, he said “people will be able to judge my remarks for themselves”.

Michael Bradley of Marque Lawyers confirmed he had issued a concerns notice to Malinauskas, which is a statutory requirement under the Defamation Act before proceedings can commence.

“Whether Randa does commence proceedings will depend very much on how he responds,” he said. “I think the defamatory aspects of [the Premier’s] comments yesterday are obvious to everyone.”

Adler described the decisions taken by the former Adelaide Festival board as “an act of cultural vandalism”.

“In their latest statement, the board say about this wasn’t about identity and dissent. It was absolutely about dissent, it was precisely about identity.

“It’s clear that silencing one Palestinian writer was more important than a festival of six days, 165 sessions, 220 plus writers,” she said.

“The term ‘cultural safety’ is code for saying, I don’t want to hear your opinion.”

South Australian Jewish leader Norman Schueler told Adelaide’s The Advertiser newspaper on Friday his community had asked that Abdel-Fattah be excluded. “Over a number of festivals there have been certain presenters who have been problematic and we are extremely pleased that they have … for once listened to what we have to say,” he said.

In other developments, the ABC received a series of letters complaining about two of its most senior journalists, Americas editor John Lyons and global affairs editor Laura Tingle, who were two of the 180 writers to have withdrawn.

The letters, which were written to formats and circulated among pro-Israel chat groups, were addressed to various ABC figures including board members, managing director Hugh Marks and news boss Justin Stevens, alleged Lyons and Tingle’s withdrawals raised questions about the ABC’s commitment to impartiality and its editorial standards. The existence of the letters was first reported by Deepcut.

The ABC is not expected to take action against its journalists, considering both Lyons and Tingle were both appearing in personal capacities, as was 7.30 host Sarah Ferguson, who also withdrew from the line-up. There is no evidence indicating any of the journalists’ decisions to withdraw would have breached the ABC’s codes of conduct regardless, according to ABC sources not authorised to comment on the record.

Lyons was due to speak about his new book on the Ukraine war, A Bunker in Kyiv. He has previously criticised the Israel lobby’s influence on Australian politics and society in his book Balcony Over Jerusalem.

The ABC did not provide a comment.

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