This past weekend produced a veritable smorgasbord of political conferences to cater for all tastes. We had the 48th Labor Party conference in Brisbane, the fifth Conservative and Political Action Network (CPAC) in Sydney, and last but not least, the eighth Canberra Writers Festival, held of course, in our nation’s capital.
Presumably, ticket holders to the Canberra Writers Festival knew what they were in for because they would have read the program before purchasing said tickets. Had they not perused the schedule, they might be asking for a refund, because this year’s festival had nothing to do with writing or literature but everything to do with lefty obsessions of the day.
Let’s have a look at the line up. If you were wondering where Stan Grant has been since having temporarily freed himself from the racist shackles of the ABC, I can answer that. In one his three appearances at the festival, Grant sat down with fellow non-racist ABC journalist Louise Milligan to indulge in a bit of self-flagellation about how profoundly terrible Australia’s history is. ‘History is not weighted on the scales, it is felt in our bones” they lamented. “It is worn on our skin. It is scarred in memory. Will Australia dare to redress the past, or will it sleepwalk into a new era of monarchy?’
The title of their session, ‘Time for a Reckoning’ was particularly pertinent, given that this is the very same Louise Milligan who wrongly accused former Coalition of ‘up skirting a woman’ and which cost the taxpayer $200,000. It’s also the same Louise Milligan, who after made sure to leave viewers with the impression that George Pell was a paedophile, did not apologise even after the High Court’s full bench unanimously found that ‘the evidence did not establish guilt to the requisite standard of proof.’
Those in the audience who wanted more Milligan not less, were treated to her appearance on stage with British journalist Angela Saini. Both panellists, billed as ‘two brilliant women’ explored Saini’s new book ‘The Patriarchy’, discussing how the ‘patriarchy is not inevitable’ and that ‘gendered inequality as rooted in something unalterable within us, we fail to see it for what it is, something more fragile that has had to be constantly remade and reasserted.’
Predictable lobbying for the Voice to Parliament came in the form of Megan Davis, who regaled the audience with stories of how she has become an ‘internationally recognised constitutional lawyer and the first Indigenous Australian to sit on a United Nations body’, as well explaining how she went from ‘railway kid to national powerbroker.’ Davis’ success could be something to do with the opportunities afforded to her by the very system that she is now trying to decolonise, but what do I know.
On Saturday morning, ticket holders were treated to a conversation between Ellen Van Neervan and Kieran Pender about van Neerven’s first work of nonfiction, ‘Personal Score’, which was advertised by the festival as ‘a ground-breaking look at sport on this continent from a First Nations and queer perspective.’ What is being passed off as culture in this country is becoming so predictable that ‘Personal Score’ would have been groundbreaking had it been written from literally any other perspective.
Finally, a woke festival in Australia would not be complete without some climate change alarmism. In ‘Seizing the moment’, a selection of panellist discussed how to ‘turn climate paralysis into meaningful action.’ They might have been too paralysed by fear to arrive at any meaningful action. We’ll never know.
Funded by the ACT government, the organisers boasted that this year’s Canberra Writers Festival was to be ‘a reflection of power, politics and passion that can only be found in this city.’ Power and politics yes. Passion, not so much.
