Introduction by Croakey: In the lead-up to the federal election, several recent events have emphasised the importance of truth-telling, transparency and holding the powerful to account.
Below, Croakey editor Marie McInerney reports from powerful discussions at Adelaide Writers Week and WOMADelaide.
She also reports on an Australian presentation to the Third Meeting of States Parties to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons at the United Nations in New York.
Her wide-ranging LongRead also brings details of many books likely to be of interest to Croakey readers.
Marie McInerney writes:
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leaders have urged allies to step up at the coming federal election and call out efforts, particularly by Opposition Leader Peter Dutton, to sow division and go backwards on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander rights and recognition.
Australia is “at a pivotal moment”, said filmmaker Rachel Perkins, an Arrernte and Kalkadoon woman and a Yes campaign leader at the 2023 Voice referendum, at an event last week in Adelaide on Kaurna country.
She urged allies to take a stand, saying this election is “incredibly important”.
Perkins, whose father Charles led the Freedom Ride to highlight segregation in Australian towns 60 years ago last month, was speaking at a panel discussion presented by The Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Centre at the University of South Australia in partnership with WOMADelaide Planet Talks.
Discussing ‘the role of stories and storytellers in creating a more inclusive and humane society’, she raised comments made by Dutton that, unlike Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, he would not stand in front of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags at media conferences if he wins government.
“Now what does that say about our preparedness to accept the story of this country if the [potential incoming] leader of the country will not, (in) that a simple gesture, acknowledge the deep story of this country, in that symbol, in that flag?” Perkins asked.
Of the prospect of Dutton becoming Prime Minister, she said, “we need to ensure that that doesn’t happen”.
“If he will not stand in front of an Aboriginal flag as our prime minister, it will be a very difficult road for our people,” she said, asking the audience what will happen to the schools, hospitals and universities who are proud to fly the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags.
“What do we ask the kids? [To] take down the flags, [to] put them away?”
Perkins urged the audience to “go out and talk about the importance of this moment”.
“Talk to the people you care about, talk to people in your workplace, and be the most persuasive you can (be)… we cannot go down that very dark path of division and conflict that is being stirred by that man [Dutton].”
The full discussion is available to watch here.
At Adelaide Writers’ Week, fellow Yes campaigner Thomas Mayo, a Kaurareg Aboriginal and Kalkalgal, Erubamle Torres Strait Islander author, activist and unionist, also urged allies to resist moves in Australia to “mimic” US President Donald Trump’s campaign against diversity, equity and inclusion policies.
And another high profile speaker, US journalist and author Kara Swisher, called on audience members to make a stand against growing oligarchy and disinformation nurtured by Trump, who is increasingly backed by big tech leaders like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg.
See below for wraps of their sessions, as well as other authors, artists, and activists speaking out on politics, democracy, truth-telling and justice.
‘No’ did not mean no to progress
In a session titled ‘what’s next?’ – in relation to the Uluru Statement from the Heart – Thomas Mayo acknowledged that the Yes campaign for the Voice referendum “undoubtedly” could have been improved.
But, what shifted majority support for the Voice to majority opposition was in 2022 when the National Party announced it would campaign against the Voice, “before there was even a question determined” for the vote, he said. Dutton then followed suit, and said MPs would not be allowed a conscience vote.
Mayo said the Coalition’s decision to use the referendum for its “political gain” was what brought about its defeat, and he hoped “they never see a reward for it”.
Speaking in a session with Dr Jared Thomas, a Nukunu person of the Southern Flinders Ranges and the Adelaide University Coordinator of Indigenous Collections and Archives, Mayo said he is hopeful that young people, who strongly supported the Yes vote, will eventually deliver on the momentum for the Uluru Statement.
But he warned that US politics now shows us “we cannot take that progressive nature of our children for granted” in the face of an organised effort “towards greater polarisation”.
“We must resist that and we must be vigilant about that,” he said.
Mayo talked about ‘bad actors’ who campaigned for No and seek to take advantage of a situation even when it harms others, and urged that it not be extrapolated.
“We say ‘No’ does not mean no to progress’,” he said.
Mayo discussed a “very effective bullying campaign” that was marshalled against Yes campaigners like him. The strategy is now being targeted at other rights and recognition such as Welcome to Country ceremonies.
“They want us to go backwards and we cannot let that happen,” he said to big applause.
Mayo also called out the Federal Labor Government for walking away from other parts of the Uluru Statement after the referendum. This was a shame, he said, “because the truth matters and you want the leadership [of this country] to have the courage to stand in that truth”.
He believed the shift to politicians like Trump and his tactic of “flooding the zone with shit” has come in part because “our so-called progressive governments, when they’ve had the opportunity, have failed to inspire and fail to act on these types of things quickly enough and effectively enough”.
Mayo urged voters to concentrate on policies in the upcoming federal election and not on issues that people are “triggered by”. These included Dutton’s stand on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags and imitations of Trump’s rhetoric attacking efforts to improve Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), aimed at “pitting Australians up against each other”.
At the global level, he said it’s likely we are “heading to darker times under Trump”.
But history also shows that fascist dictatorships have fallen, “because people fought against them”.
Explaining why his latest book Always Was, Always Will Be starts with hope, he said “we need to believe we can make the world a better place”.
Not in our best interests
Leading US technology journalist Kara Swisher, author of Burn Book: A Tech Love Story and host of the must-listen On with Kara Swisher podcast, also called on citizens to resist the power being handed to Big Tech leaders (or “titans” as she writes here) like Elon Musk.
At another packed Writers’ Week session, Swisher emphasised that Trump’s 2024 presidential win was not a landslide and that Musk’s support, estimated at about $200 million, helped “push him over the top”.
It was “an excellent investment on his part”, she said, writing later that Musk’s net worth nearly doubled after Trump’s victory and is sitting at $348 billion today, “with billions more possible as he remakes the government in his image”.
Swisher warned that tech giants like Musk and Mark Zuckerberg want to “privatise” government and are inclined towards a dictatorial Silicon Valley “founder” style of leadership, which is “very solicitous” of men, and white men in particular.
In an entertaining but alarming discussion titled ‘When the Tech Bros Come to Town’, she warned against an appropriation of the Big Tech mantra, to ‘move fast and break things’, into the work of government.
“It used to be that the government and industry had a relationship, and the government was an equal player. But if industry runs everything, they’re going to make decisions based on shareholder value and not on the best interests of society,” she said.
Swisher also warned that artificial intellience was looming as particularly dangerous and highlighted some significant risks under the Trump Administration, including Musk’s growing capacity to access official data.
She has also launched a quixotic quest to buy The Washington Post, where she began work as a journalist, following worrying editorial intervention by its owner, Jeff Bezos of Amazon fame/wealth.
After holding a straight editorial line for a number of years, Bezos recently announced that the masthead would now only publish editorials that support free markets and personal liberty.
That translates as “let me do what the f**k I want”, she said.
Swisher said the world has had to address propaganda in the past, but it was particularly at risk now given the “business of media has been hollowed out so profoundly by Google and Meta”.
Asked what to do In the face of the threat Big Tech owners pose, Swisher said citizens can start to take control “the way we’ve done all throughout our history”.
“To do that (we have) to move forward together as a group,” she said.
Invited also to weigh in on the impact of Rupert Murdoch – who she dubbed “Uncle Satan” – Swisher said he had “certainly managed to really wreck our country in a lot of ways with Fox News”.
But she declared “his era is over”, and that the power of Fox has now been taken over by X. She expects News Corp will be “sold off for parts” once Murdoch dies.
Swisher also warned the audience not to become trapped in responding to outrages like a satiric Gaza video retweeted by Trump, or rants about DEI and plane crashes – “I always look at the distraction, and then find out what they’re actually doing.”
Robodebt doubled down
The Saturday Paper journalist Rick Morton spoke at a session devoted to his book Mean Streak, about the horrendous #Robodebt scandal.
He talked about those who lost their lives due to #Robodebt, and also the many more “who lost their quality of life, had jobs taken away from them…who spiralled into mental illness…stayed with their abusers because they couldn’t afford to leave”.
“You only need one of them to present themselves to you as a government to say, ‘Do you know what? We might have gone too far on this’,” Morton said.
“You only need one. They had tens of thousands of them…and instead they doubled down and turned the machine on so it went faster and faster.”
Morton also urged greater transparency, declaring that “nothing kills a dodgy scheme faster than transparency and sunlight and people knowing what the f**k is going on”.
He warned about reluctance of public servants to record notes in case they faced Freedom of Information (FoI) requests, with the Robodebt Royal Commission concerned that many documents could not be accessed under FOI because they were part of cabinet submissions.
“The fact that Freedom of Information as a law might make people be wary of writing things out is not our problem. The fact that people don’t want to be caught is the problem,” Morton said.
It’s worth noting that the Federal Government’s independent Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee this week called for a substantial increase to JobSeeker and related income support payments as its top priority recommendation for the third year running.
The Committee again found that lifting JobSeeker to 90 percent of the pension (from $56 per day to $74 per day) would substantially fix its inadequacy.
Check out this X thread from Rick Morton’s session.
Read more here: https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/law-crime/2024/11/02/eight-minutes-outside-how-the-nacc-failed-robodebt
Shameful lack of action
At another major event last week, Karina Lester, proud Yankunytjatjara woman, mother of four and a second-generation survivor of the British nuclear tests in South Australia in the 1950s and 1960s, spoke at the United Nations in New York.
Lester, an Ambassador for the Nobel Peace Prize winning International Campaign Against Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), urged the Australian Government to sign up to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, focusing particularly on Articles 6 and7 of the Treaty, which requires support for communities impacted by the use and testing of nuclear weapons.
Lester’s father Yami was blinded by the first mainland nuclear bomb test, near his birth place, Walyatjata, in 1953, “when the low-lying black mist came through his camp, poisoning the country, poisoning people”, she told the UN.
She called on the global community to deliver “tangible, grounded, practical good” for communities affected by nuclear weapons, including funded research into the health impacts of testing, transport and medicines for those with radiation-related illnesses, and steps to address environmental contamination.
Lester said that many Pacific and Southeast Asian nations have signed up to the treaty.
“Australia is the gap in our region. And this is shameful, nothing but broken promises,” she said.
You can watch her address to the UN here: https://icanw.org.au/karinalester_statement_msp3/
We cannot sit back
My Croakey colleague Alison Barrett also shared some takeaways on LinkedIn from Writers Week sessions that she attended. They included:
The power and importance of truth-telling in books, both fiction and non-fiction, is immense. I am reading Anita Heiss’ book, Dirrayawadha, and it baffles me that we don’t know more about the frontier wars. Thank you Anita for sharing this important part of history, as well as sharing your research and cultural practice in developing this story at Adelaide Writers Week 2025.
Kirstie Parker, signatory to the 2017 Uluru Statement from the Heart and a Co-Chair of Reconciliation Australia, and Wesley Lowery, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and author of American Whitelash, emphasised the importance of understanding historical contexts and the role of media in shaping public perception.
Parker called on “every single person in every single setting in their lives” to do what they can to address racism. Actions need to be “determined and definite” and require systemic change.
Lowery said that “those of us who are justice-minded, equity-minded on a multiracial, multicultural society and world” don’t have the luxury of sitting back and taking a break to fight for a just society.
With each progression towards a just society over time, nationalist movements (ie Brexit, white nationalism in US etc etc) “become increasingly desperate, shrewd and violent”.
You are all of this and so much more
And finally, it’s hard to convey the power of a discussion and a closing poem at the Writers’ Week session on ‘Between colonial archives and Indigenous memory,’ which featured Adjunct Professor Natalie Harkin, Narungga woman and poet, whose book Apron-Sorrow / Sovereign-Tea has just been published.
She was speaking alongside Dr Jackie Huggins, a member of the Bidjara and Birri Gubba Juru peoples, who has also written widely on the indenturing of Aboriginal women and girls, including in two publications: White Aprons, Black Hands: Aboriginal Women Domestic Servants in Queensland and Aunty Rita.
They raised issues about ‘archive justice’ — the many barriers imposed on access to official files about these women and girls, and also about the shocking deficit discourse those files reveal.
Harkin read a poem at the end of the session, detailing some of the demeaning descriptions that littered the files, and closed with:
You are sovereign. You are radiant. You are songline. You are love. You are all of this and so much more, and none of their above.”
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