Opinion: Historic Malinauskas’ speech of hope in troubling times

Adelaide Festival. Writers Week. 2 Mar 2025

 

Writers Week (WW) 2025 was unlike any other WW. 

Under our glorious blue sky in the lovely leafy garden, it took on a theme of global anxiety, reiterated by speaker after speaker.

As the Premier said, “these are troubling times and we are right to be troubled”.

 

Indeed, called upon by WW director Louise Adler OAM, Peter Malinauskas played a high-profile role in WW ’25 and gave the most landmark speech of his career, one so wise and statesmanlike that murmurs are growing about his potential as an Australian PM.

 

Rich in perceptive gravitas and delivered in the Adelaide Town Hall on Sunday March 2 at the WW 2025 Opening event with Sir Simon Schama on Antisemitism, our premier said:

 

Humani nihil Alienum [hoo-MA-ni neel ah-lee-AY-num]

“Nothing human is alien to me.”

 

It’s a line drawn from an ancient Greek playwright who predates the birth of Christ.

It’s a simple sentence that speaks volumes.

It’s an inspirational idea, that everything learned and everything achieved by different cultures through different eras has been part of a single great effort, shared by all humankind.

And yet, over two thousand years on, it’s a lesson that our species struggles to learn – and the cost is incalculable.

 

Earlier this evening Waleed Aly, Susan Carland and Aftab Malik spoke with great clarity about the deleterious effect of Islamophobia on our society.

Shortly you will hear the insights of Sir Simon Schama, exploring the growing and unacceptable visibility of antisemitism in many countries, tragically including our own.

As a democratically elected leader it is my duty to act in the interests of all South Australians: not just those that support one particular party, or one particular economic class, or one particular faith.

 

So, I should be crystal clear:

Antisemitism has no place in our free and democratic society, any more than Islamophobia or other forms of bigotry with which we are all to familiar.

The very fact that I feel the need to say this is and of itself should be a source of alarm.

There is power in forums like Writers’ Week because it gives us the opportunity to ventilate important issues, but that it does so in a way that brings the temperature down.

I appreciate that it’s sometimes hard to maintain an even temper over matters of deep conscience. That’s part of what it is to be human.

 

Late last week a mate sent me a text message. It was of a link to a YouTube clip and it was from the Year 2000. It was President Carter with President Ford on stage at a presidential library event. And they spoke with such eloquence and simplicity about the value of civility and the power of thoughtful political discourse in a way that would elevate all rather than being at the expense of some.

And I watched it, and I found it stunning. Only because it was so different in the context with which we are now all too familiar.

 

It feels like a balance has tipped in recent times, when high emotion too often turns conversation into a debate, and a debate into a battle. It’d be naïve not to recognise that there are those who seek to throw kindling on that raging fire, from media, old and new, that survive through hate-clicks and politicians reliant on keeping an electorate too righteously indignant to trust the evidence of their own senses.

No side of politics is immune to the poison of our increased polarisation: this wilful blindness that underpins the condescending scolds of the Left just as much as the conspiracy theories from the right-wing Q-anon adherents.

And this should terrify us all, because we live in a time of exceptional global uncertainty.

 

We are seeing incredible threats to stability, whether through technological disruption, geopolitical brinksmanship, or the erosion of trusted institutions.

We no longer have the luxury to remain complacent about the primacy of old alliances or shared values on the global stage.

Every week there seems to be a new low in the discourse, a new threat to global détente.

So, it’s entirely understandable that in an environment of escalating uncertainty, electorates are increasingly gravitating to strong, confident, decisive leaders. And it’s not a bad thing for a leader to be strong.

But more strength is found in compassion than complicity in rising division.

Compassion is the antidote to tribalism. It is resistant to the power of disinformation. It challenges us, each of us, to ignore the howls of the mob and listen for the whispers of our better angels.

 

Fortunately we have a powerful weapon at our disposal in the pursuit of compassion: the operation of an open, liberal democracy.

Democracy was created to curb the authoritarian impulses of the powerful and the cruel, and to give voice to people to determine their own path.

All forms of racial or religious hatred are undemocratic, by definition, for they seek to silence competing voices, and remove that choice and autonomy.

But every democracy, every society, is a work in progress.

We have learned that trying to confine these hatreds to dark corners of the internet only allows the bigotry to metastasize like the cancer it is, mutating into the sort of conspiratorial worldview which could so easily infect our own body politic, unless we do all we can to inoculate against it.

We have seen that democracy can be fragile, and that its protection – its very survival – demands vigilance, care, and action.

 

Since I had the privilege to last speak at this event, I am very proud that since then, South Australia has passed legislation to regulate social media, to ban political donations from all, and to bring civics into the state curriculum.

We do these things because they bolster our democracy, and more specifically bolster our citizens’ faith in democracy as working for them, for their families, and most importantly, for the generations to come.

 

With such action, there is hope a public discourse where civility and respect and evidence-based data can compete with the lies of strongman leaders and overseas bot farms.

It has never been more important for democratic countries to actively make the case for democracy itself and to take steps to preserve and strengthen it – because we have seen where those authoritarian impulses can lead.

 

Which brings me back to tonight’s topic, and to the great society that respect and kindness has built in this city, and this state in particular.

These are troubling times. And we are right to be troubled.

But we also remember a truth so obvious that it’s sometimes easy to take for granted: that we are better together.

Our differences make us stronger. Variety and diversity are essential survival traits, for every form of life on this planet.

And this natural law applies equally to nations.

 

The last century of Australia’s history makes abundantly clear that the more effectively we remove barriers to participation, the more viewpoints we consider, the more expertise and wisdom we can draw upon, the better off we become.

We see these improvements in health status, in educational attainment, in life expectancy, in economic prosperity, in every metric you can name.

 

The reality is that greater access to opportunity brings improvement in standards of living across the board.

This is what democracy makes possible.

We must not, and we will not, let this incredible bounty, this product of great work and great cooperation, be toppled by hatred and division.

Hate builds nothing. But if our actions are underpinned by the timeless values of respect and compassion, our future is boundless.

Nothing human is alien to me.

These are the words of our better angels.

 

I believe, as I know everyone here does, that it is within our ability in Australia, amongst its people to continue to be a beacon of hope and democracy underpinned by sound values where we care for others more than we care for ourselves – the quintessential egalitarian ideal that binds us together in this nation.

I believe we can do this.

If we have the courage to be kind.

 

Louise Adler. We bless her. We curse her.

She has laid on the most breathtakingly relevant Writers Week in the event’s long history.

She has broken away from the convention of fine and interesting authors embroidering their presence with attention to the deeper politics of the world around us. She has added the ingredients of turbulence, creating new crowds which snake in queues out of the Drill Hall every day.

There, 700 or more people can devour the knowledge and opinions of leading intellectuals, she’s done it again at the Town Hall.  

These are ticketed events in this, the world’s one and only, free Writer’s festival. They don’t break the bank.

 

Samela Harris

Story: Carols by Candlelight 2024

Three things that the people of Adelaide love - their St John Ambulance, their Carols by Candlelight free concert in Elder Park and their good-natured home-grown super-star Hugh Sheridan.

This year, come December 14, the three collide in a better, better best yet happiness happening.

Sheridan says he has beautiful memories of the Carols by Candlelight of his childhood and is genuinely excited about being able to lay down new memories for a new year and an audience of new and old.

 

Carols by Candlelight is a deep and sweet city tradition.

 

"Singing Carols brings people together in a way that few other things can,” says Hugh.  " It’s one of the most joyous and heartwarming experiences.

"I have the best memories from enjoying Carols with my late father who would be so proud to see me on stage at his favourite event of the festive season.”

His father was, of course, that beloved entertainer Dennis Sheridan.

 

Hugh is starring in a stunning lineup of local artistes - the amazing Gospo Collective, the bedazzling Festival Statesmen Chorus, applauded feature singers of State Opera SA, Dancers by Donna, The Adelaide Concert Orchestra and the Adelaide Philharmonic Choir.

And, of course, also the divine Dami Im, Amber Lawrence and Emma Memma of the Wiggles with the faces of Channel Seven hosting with Rosanna Mangiarelli.

 

St John Ambulance SA CEO Mark Groote says: “How lucky that we are to be able to attract so much talent to sing with us all in Adelaide? It’s a pleasure to announce these celebrated SA artists will be on board to ensure our 80th event is unforgettable. And how exciting for them that they’ll share duties with the likes of Hugh Sheridan and the previously announced esteemed performers Dami Im, Emma Memma, Mark and Eva Seymour.

“We’ve been the proud custodians of Carols since 2022, and including local performers on our line-up is always a high priority,”

 

The event has been on the Adelaide calendar since 1944 and it packs the Elder Park/ Tarntanya Wama with blissed out families, complete with rugs and picnics, 15,000 expected this 80th year. 

 

Gates open at 3.00pm with food and fun on ground, and the concert commences at 8.15pm, culminating in a spectacular fireworks show, all of the above to be be broadcast nationally on Channel 7, via 7Two and 7Plus on Sunday 15 December 2024, as well as on Christmas Day.

 

More information can be found at www.stjohncarols.com.au or follow the event on Facebook and Instagram for all the latest news on the 2024 St John Carols by Candlelight. 

 

Samela Harris

Opinion: The Critical Condition of South Australia’s Arts Record

“Critical condition” has taken a new meaning in Adelaide, the one time ‘City of the Arts’.

It has been coming upon us inexorably. Death by a thousand cuts.

 

In July, 2024 The Adelaide Critics Circle Incorporated expressed its concern at the news on June 30 that The Advertiser’s long-term, specialist-contributor critics were being thanked for their service and informed:

 

“We will no longer be running arts reviews so will no longer be needing you as a contributor. This email is to give you 30 days’ notice.”

 

This news generated a tsunami of distress and anger on social media.

The MEAA, the union representing both journalists/critics, actors, and theatre workers declared:

 

“The decision of Adelaide’s Advertiser to no longer employ specialist freelance arts reviewers is mindless cost-cutting that does a major disservice to the city’s arts community, audiences, and its readers.” 

 

Others among the torrent of commentary were not as polite.

 

We have blithely taken for granted the role of arts criticism as a commentary of record on the cultural state of play.

 

There is, of course, plenty of arts commentary and criticism if one looks around; much more so since the freedom of the Internet gave voice to anyone who wants to have a say. But the official record has always lain in print. Poor, beloved, doomed print.

Traditional print newspapers have been the official organs of “the record”.

They have been universally accessible. They have been “actual” as opposed to “virtual”.

 

Hence, the perplexity in the arts world when the one newspaper of the one-newspaper city ceases to print specialist arts reviews. Arts companies and practitioners have had to learn to seek them out online and print them out themselves. Even online, they’ve decreased in our major masthead. Critics were getting fewer assignments.

 

For an organ such as InDaily, it is less problematic. Through the auspices of the Helpmann Academy, InDaily produces Adelaide’s premiere arts publication, InReview. It has a stable of erudite critics and an unprecedented program of mentoring and publishing new up-and-coming critics. There is nothing quite like it. It is a beacon. And it is free.

 

But it is not alone as a respected online voice of criticism and commentary.

Boutique performing arts sites such as ours, The Barefoot Review, are long-standing, this one now expanded to include the visual arts as well as occasional features and interviews.

Accepted review sites include Glam Adelaide which is quick off the mark with crits as too is Stage Whispers and The Clothesline. There are selected reviews in Broadway World and ArtsHub. There’s TASA, Limelight, Fifty+, and Theatre Travels.

There are reputable personal sites such as those of Murray Bramwell, John Doherty, and Steve Davis. Other independents post on Facebook.

Adelaide’s arts world ever was fecund.

 

Adelaide was publishing its own newspaper within two years of settlement; its first editions having been produced in London and shipped out. Adelaide had built its first official theatre within two years of settlement. The arts have been fundamental to the fabric of our society.

 

The Advertiser and for some years, the Adelaide Review, shone the light on the social and professional health of the arts.

In the earlier years, if one delves into Trove, not only were the performing and visual arts fastidiously and occasionally ferociously reviewed, but the critics included commentary on current trends and characters in their reports.

The critics were respected, some revered, and some feared.

Adelaide became known to the national and international arts world as the city with the toughest critics.

It was not that our critics have been harsh. It is that they have been highly discerning and finessed by an education in international arts festivals since 1960.

 

We just have to accept the cold realities of our times.

The city’s print daily has tried. Print space and the ever-pinching economy have reduced the colourful loquacity of yore. 

 

Upliftingly, following the firing furore, The Advertiser’s editor, Gemma Jones, seemed to countermand the edict with this statement: 

 

“The Advertiser has a proud history of covering the arts, including reviews by respected critics. The Advertiser's commitment to the arts has not changed. The masthead will continue to employ experts, both from external sources and from its reporting ranks which boast talented arts writers and editors with many decades of experience. Readers can continue to look forward to reviews of Adelaide Festival. A number of reviews with very small online audiences will cease to ensure The Advertiser's efforts are directed to arts content with wider appeal.”

 

Uplifting but also puzzling.

 

The city’s independent arts advocacy group, The Adelaide Critics Circle, founded in 1996 by then Festival director Robyn Archer,  has been in deep discussion about where to for the arts record of this arts city once proudly labelled, car number plates and all, “The Festival State”.

 

It had bragged an ongoing history of arts initiatives, a veritable arts fecundity after the Playford years. The Dunstan Decade engendered such a national reputation that creatives flocked in to share the energy.

Government support kick-started all sorts of things. 

We spawned so many arts talents that we could afford to share them with the world. They were an unofficial state export.

Those golden years are now fragments of memory.

Today, we don’t share talent. We lose it.

We don’t have “Festival State” number plates and our beloved 50-year-old Festival Centre has been squashed and overshadowed by commercial development.

 

Where once our Festivals and Fringes were blessed with mainstream sponsorship, now they plead.

For many years, the ‘Tiser published daily lift-out sections to cover all the reviews and stories emerging from the Fringe and Festival. Daily program guides showed the stars and grabs from current crits.  Festivalgoers carried these lift-outs around with them.

 

These were the days when the ‘Tiser’s arts policy was to have a reviewer at every opening.

This was a massive logistical feat, and it was sometimes criticised because not all the reviewers were au fait with the arts.

The masthead was investing vast sums in its art support, paid reviews, and in-kind sponsorship going right to the nitty gritty with reams of newsprint. But, just as the Government started to tighten its arts belt, so did the paper.

 

The Adelaide Critics Circle fell afoul of the arts cutbacks, too. It began with annual arts grants from the Department of the Arts.  This enabled it to present the richest performing arts awards in the country: $1500 a pop. They were much envied around the land. Silversmith Christine Pyman was commissioned to create a logo, a figure reaching for the stars, and silver trophies went with the cash awards. The critics wore matching silver badges.

 

Coopers added money for amateur theatre awards and The Independent Arts Foundation sponsored the coveted “Innovation in the Arts” award.

But changes in government administration and office bearers and the establishment of the government’s own Ruby awards resulted in the Circle’s government funding reducing bit by bit to zero.

Awards for excellence across the board, and even Lifetime Achievement awards, have had their cash and trophies replaced by certificates.  Thanks to faithful Coriole wines and other sponsors, and the support of independent venues such as Goodwood Theatres and Holden Street, the awards nights and accolades continue.

The Critics Circle awards are profoundly respected throughout the arts industry. They still stand aloft because they are independently bestowed. Companies and individuals do not have to “apply” for consideration. The critics are out and about keeping on top of current work. Throughout the year they make nominations and at year’s end, they vote.

 

Meanwhile, we must be philosophical. Print media has been going through tough times.  Redundancies and budget cuts have depleted newsrooms. The ‘Tiser has kept an arts presence with magazine features and lively news stories. But lost are the Arts opinion columns which enabled experienced media pundits to provide valuable commentary on the health of the arts.

One does not doubt that the masthead would prefer it otherwise.   

One would never say the rationalisation of millennial economy was a matter of choice.

We are in a new era. We need new solutions. 

The dear old ’Tiser stands as a little red flag.

The record itself is teetering on non-existence.

 

Talking to the SA State Library about what is and isn’t archived for posterity one discovers that, yes, the print media and all things print are up there stashed and stored. Old school has a future record. InDaily and The Advertiser’s digital content are harvested and will be available for researchers. All is not lost.

But, for how long? The National Archives also is selective in what is preserved for posterity, mainly official business. 

The Internet’s famous WayBack Machine seems to have run out of puff for scouring web content.  

And what of posterity, anyway? Who might need it?

What socio-historic minutiae matters in the deep tomorrows of time?

 

As things stand, with the evolution of the boundless virtual world, ’tis but a mortal dollar deal.

 

When the Internet was invented, it was hoped to be the vast free library of all knowledge for all.  Then “the men in suits” discovered it and saw a profit line. Pornography was their first cash cow. And then, bit by voracious bit, it all became commodified.  

Now we pay for everything online and when we don’t pay, it ceases to exist. Domains large and small live the life of their owners.

Even our individual email is out there on that supposedly immense repository we call “The Cloud”.  If we don’t pay for our space there, it, too, is gone. 

 

Historians wring their hands. Ephemera rules.

 

Samela Harris

 

Samela Harris is founding chair of the Adelaide Critics Circle and a former Arts Editor at The Advertiser. She also was that paper’s Internet columnist and inaugural online editor.

Opinion: History rests on the brink as SA Museum faces extinction event

"Reimagine."

This word set all my cultural alarm bells off into strident chimes of incredulity.

The new administration plans to “reimagine” our stately old SA Museum.

They find it tired. They think the Egyptian Room is old hat. All very yesterday.

Silly old me.

 

I have spent my life believing that museums are where you keep old hats.  Dated old hats with dates recorded on them, so to speak. Museums are all about things dated.

Carbon dated!

 

If anything is old and tired, surely it must be all those ancient rocks our museum has so expertly collected. They don’t do much. They just sit there. But, their millions of years of survival telling the fossil record of evolution makes the 60 thousand years of Aboriginal artefacts and history seem Johnny Come Lately.

In the vast scheme of things, this is so.  

The museum’s collections shows us exactly how it is so.

 

Our museum’s Ediacaran collection has led to that geological period here scoring what they call a “Golden Spike” in the planet’s timeline. That’s a bit on the big deal side.

I’m an old lady now but my knowledge base from childhood has been underscored by what I have seen and learnt to understand in our museum.

I’ve always loved it, although some of the concepts it explores have scared me.

Many things have been heartbreaking. Extinction, for instance. 

The loss of Aboriginal heritage and language.

The rise of recognition of this is uplifting. We are learning how much we have to learn. 

But without the museum’s showcase of our pasts, bad and good, it would be hard to teach our young and young to come.

 

The importance of the museum and the knowledge it represents is so fundamental that it feels a bit ridiculous to be enumerating it.

“Seeing with your own eyes” is what museums give us.

 

That “outdated” Egyptology room has been imprinted on my memory since childhood. It led to years of learning and even to a small degree of collecting antiquities. It was a springboard for knowledge. Yes, it is fusty. But it could do with more, not less.

 

As for the insect collection. It fed my fascination, too. Had I not fallen into journalism, becoming an entomologist was high on career choices. In my London years, I had the privilege of breeding insects for the living collection: cockroaches and stick insects. To this day, I study and worry about the insect and arachnid world. The drop in their population is a terrifying signal in our growing climate crisis.

 

The museum is there to explain these things, its researchers to devise reasons and strategies.  Sometimes, nuances in science lead to major world-changing developments.

Research is a core business. Knowledge is everything.

 

The idea of slashing research in a crucible of discovery is sickeningly regressive.

As for “reimagining”. What an insulting concept. 

 

History tries to represent the past with integrity. It often leaves a record. Museums keep the record. It helps us to imagine what and where and how of the past, to see history in the mind’s eye. But “re-imagine”? Re-contexualise? I can think of a few “re”-words, since “re” sings of a different sort of backwards. Repress, retard, regress….

 

It makes me think of those American museums where religious anti-evolutionists had forced the change of exhibit labels to “theory”. Ignorance is on the rise.

 

So it comes to pass that the people of this state have risen to the cause. We’re furious.  We’re a crowd of signatories of letters and Tweets and memes. Suddenly, from all sides of politics, from all ages and demographics, we are angry activists.

 

See you on the steps of Parliament House on Saturday 13th April.

 

Samela Harris