By Spinifex intern, Veronica Sullivan
The Australian literary community reacted last week with outrage and disbelief to Queensland Premier Campbell Newman’s decision to cancel ‘his’ awards – the QLD Premier’s Literary Awards – after just three weeks in office. Newman’s decision, announced on Wednesday 4th April, raises a litany of issues about his motivations and their ramifications.
The cost saved to Queensland taxpayers, according to Newman, will be $240 000: a $230 000 prize pool, and $10 000 in administration costs. This is only a small portion – less than 0.04 per cent – of the Queensland Government’s 2011-2012 budget. The sum is not a substantial one to the government, but it is to the state’s arts community, as is the retraction of this important avenue of recognition for authors who are often otherwise overlooked.
Outside of the industry, literary news isn’t generally a hot-button political issue. Newman will have been relying on a general disinterest or ambivalence amongst Queenslanders, hoping they would accept his supposed budget-consciousness with no complaints about the long-term cultural ramifications. Ironically and hearteningly, the resulting public outcry in Queensland and around Australia has given the awards and the literary community far more publicity than they would ever have attracted ordinarily.
Newman failed to anticipate the passionate and vociferous response of Queensland’s readers, authors and booksellers, who abhor the possibility of being the only State without a literary awards program. In just over a week, an online petition for the reinstatement of the awards has already garnered over 3000 signatures.
With 14 categories, including an emerging author award for an unpublished manuscript, the Premier’s awards are a valuable platform for publicising new and unheard voices. One of the categories was the lauded David Unaipon Award for best unpublished Indigenous manuscript. Aboriginal writing is underrepresented in Australia generally, and the David Unaipon award is unique.
The premier has been unrepentant about the potential devastation he has released on Queensland’s literary community. Newman says he’ll make “no apologies” for his decision, which ironically comes in the midst of the National Year of Reading. Newman’s election campaign included a commitment to preserving the state’s arts and culture. His retrograde attitude raises worrying echoes of a previous narrow-minded Queensland government – the paradoxical mix of conservatism and institutionalised corruption which ran rampant under Joh Bjelke-Petersen in the 1970s and 1980s.
In the wake of the axing another parallel arises, with Spinifex author Francesca Rendle-Short’s childhood in 1970s Queensland. As relayed in her memoir, Bite Your Tongue, Francesca’s mother, Angel, was an evangelical Christian who campaigned for strict censorship of school English texts and conducted book-burnings. Her targets were books which she perceived as immoral and depraved, including To Kill a Mockingbird, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and the works of Virginia Woolf.
Ironically, from this creatively repressed environment, Francesca grew to become an artist, author, poet and creative writer. She is also Program Director of the Creative Writing degree at RMIT University.
While retracting funding from literature does not equate to condemning or banning it, it does demonstrate a disregard for the importance of the arts which is cause for concern. Francesca has observed the unfolding of these events with sadness. “I really didn't think that Queensland would return to being a one-party state again, but it has,” she says. “I thought we had learned lessons from the past. The LNP's current hold on a 78 seat majority to Labor's 7 seats, without an upper house to oversee the business of government and its policy and decisions, shocks me deeply. All sorts of terrible decisions will now be made with this kind of mandate.
“The other shock is how quick Campbell Newman was to axe the award – after only ten days in office and as one of his first decisions – what will happen in 100 days? Given the decision was made over such a paltry amount, and given the timing, this act of his is acutely symbolic. It says so much about Newman and the LNP's view of literature and writing and reading, and the value of the arts in our community.
“But I also know that in adversity there is hope and life, and that some of the best writing will come out of Queensland over the next term of government. The state will produce writing that is incisive, inspired, inventive, resonant and bountiful."
In the wake of the decision to cancel the awards, the Queensland literary community has rallied. An alliance of booksellers, authors and various industry figures have been vocal in expressing their determination to continue the awards in some form, with or without government support. The group is calling for the awards to be renamed the Queensland People’s Literary Awards, in recognition of their new grassroots nature.
The group is fronted by Krissy Kneen, who has reiterated her opinion that literary prizes are not about the money, but about attaining wider recognition for deserving authors who otherwise go unnoticed. She says, “the most important thing is the kudos of the nomination”. Although authors may welcome financial recognition of their work, money is not generally a prime motivator in the choice a writing career.
In an interview on the ABC Radio breakfast program on Wednesday 4th April, Queensland-raised journalist and writer Matthew Condon confirmed the awards would go ahead without prize money. He said that while sponsorship and monetary prizes are strong incentives, the awards would be given this year without financial recompense for the winners. He stated his hope that “as long as the awards are kept alive in this new form, then one would hope down the track, that patronage is attracted to that”.
As scary as it is to acknowledge that a state government can completely discard its recognition of literature, the reaction around Australia has been passionate and overwhelmingly optimistic. Readers and writers are not prepared to give up on the awards, and judging by these responses their survival is assured, whatever form they may take.
Follow Veronica on Twitter: @veronicaahhh
Francesca Rendle-Short's website: http://francescarendleshort.com/
