Australian author and lawyer Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah, who was dropped for from the 2026 Adelaide Writers’ Week, is taking legal action in what is now a major political issue.

Michael Bradley of Marque Lawyers, representing Abdel-Fattah, said that “the moral indefensibility of the Adelaide Festival board’s actions has been amply evidenced by the reaction it’s provoked. It also trampled on Randa’s human rights, and the board will have to answer for that.”

His legal letter specifies board members should “retain all documents in their possession, including emails, texts and messages on disappearing messaging apps” as these may be required for the purposes of litigation.

Yesterday the Chair of the Adelaide Festival Boards, Tracey Whiting, resigned as did Daniela Ritorto, Donny Walford and Nicholas Linke OAM, leaving only three board members and a government observer. The rump does not provide a quorum to make decisions.

“I have decided to resign as chair of the Adelaide Festival Board, effective immediately.” Whiting wrote in a post on LinkedIn.

“Recent decisions were bound by certain undertakings, and my resignation enables the Adelaide Festival, as an organisation, to refresh its leadership and its approach to these circumstances.”

It is unclear at this time what those ‘certain undertakings’ were, but hard copy evidence has been produced that Ms Whiting in the 2024 Adelaide Writers’ Festival, defended the rights of writers to speak.

Louise Adler, the Director of Adelaide Writers’ Week, has also resigned.

It is understood Ms Adler was not consulted about the Board’s decision.

The knock-on effects have spread as according to InDaily, Day two of the festival’s contemporary music program, has now been abandoned, with every artist programmed having pulled out.

Premier Peter Malinauskas yesterday again backed the Board’s decision to remove Abdel-Fattah.

The Board contacted the Premier before making its statement to ‘deplatform’ Abdel-Fattah last week and he supported its decision.

Premier Malinauskas rose up through the ranks of the SDA, which represents the last bastion of ultra-conservative and pro-Catholic thinking in Australia.

The SA Arts Minister Andrea Michaels has taken a short course in invisibility.

Abdel-Fattah was scheduled to talk about her new novel Discipline, set in Sydney during Ramadan.

More than 100 international and domestic writers such as Zadie Smith, Michelle de Kretser, Peter Greste, Yanis Varoufakis, Evelyn Araluen, Amy McQuire, Clare Wright, Chelsea Watego, Bernadette Brennan and Amy Remeikis, have already pulled the plug on speaking. There will be more.

In a statement The Adelaide Festival Board wrote, “We have been shocked and saddened by the tragic events at Bondi. We have been further saddened by the national grief and the significant heightening of both community tensions and community debate.”

“… given her (Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah’s) past statements we have formed the view that it would not be culturally sensitive to continue to program her at this unprecedented time so soon after Bondi.”

What statements? Where were they printed? What did they say? No one knows. Plus they cancelled her for fear of what she might say – but hasn’t said yet.

The Board said its role was to promote social cohesion but it has created a political nightmare.

The Adelaide Festival Board was chaired by marketing executive Tracey Whiting, journalist Daniela Ritorto, Adelaide Airport managing director Brenton Cox and others – but no artists.

In November 2024, Arts Hub analysed the boards of Australia’s highest profile public performing arts companies – the 37 National Performing Arts Framework Organisations and Australia’s 12 major state and contemporary art museums.

Less than one in 10 have senior management experience in the arts, and less than one in 20 have senior management experience in the relevant art form.

In 2023, the Director of Adelaide Writers’ Week, Louise Adler told ABC Radio Adelaide the writers’ festival needed to protect the principle of inviting writers to participate “because we believe their work as writers is important and interesting”.

Last April, Adler told Radio Nationals Arts the influence of artists on arts boards has dropped over the last two decades. People from the commercial sector had joined those boards and their focus is on risk management.

As organisations rely more on external funding, it’s only “natural” that boards would become more “cautious”, she said, “and it’s counterproductive and it’s been devastating”.

Don Dunstan modernised public life. He provided the Festival Centre Trust, the Film Corporation, Carclew and others. Dunstan propelled Adelaide to national prominence as the place to be in the arts scene. By comparison, Malinauskas has done nothing.

Abdel-Fattah was one of the 50 participants who withdrew from the Bendigo Writers Festival over allegations of censorship by the organisers. Talk about history repeating.

Writing festivals must be a platform for the sharing of powerful stories: urgent, necessary and sometimes difficult. Such conversations have never been more timely. They are no place for the spineless.

As Richard Flanagan wrote, “Once upon a time writers’ festivals celebrated them, and with them the values of intellectual freedom and freedom of debate. Writing that mattered wasn’t seen as being about being reassured, comforted, deceived and cosseted in our own opinions.”

On the monument at the Pioneer Women’s Memorial Garden in Adelaide you’ll find the words, “The hours vanish yet they are recorded.”

Let it be recorded this Writers’ Week that the right to free speech vanished.