It followed organiser Greater Bendigo City Council sending a code of conduct to writers two days before the festival’s now-cancelled opening night gala.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Festival spokesperson Julie Amos said it was a condensed summary of the council’s own code of conduct.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The opening line of the missive set out an expectation to “avoid language or topics that could be considered inflammatory, divisive, or disrespectful”.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Jess Hill is one of dozens of writers who withdrew from the Bendigo Writers Festival. (ABC News: Jack Fisher)<\/p>\n
Author and investigative journalist Jess Hill was supposed to speak at a La Trobe University panel on Sunday and said this line was “totally subjective” and set a “dangerous precedent”.<\/p>\n
She questioned why organisers would invite authors to speak if they did not trust they could engage in respectful debate.<\/p>\n
“The message we’re sending is if you try to restrict speech at a festival of ideas in the future, the very viability of your festival will be at risk,” she said.<\/p>\n
Ms Amos said the intent of the code of conduct may have been “lost in oversimplification”.<\/p>\n
“All we wanted to do was to provide some parameters for people to have safe and respectful conversations,” she said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Julie Amos speaking to ABC Statewide Mornings on Friday. (ABC Central Victoria: Emile Pavlich)<\/p>\n
The Australian Society of Authors (ASA) is concerned about increased use of codes of conduct, not only at writers festivals but across library, university and other speaking events.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The society’s deputy chair Jennifer Mills said the documents were designed to make authors “fearful and nervous”.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Festivals should not be playing the role of policing what writers can and can’t say,” she said.<\/p>\n
“It’s not appropriate and I think these codes of conduct are trying to pre-emptively avoid, it seems, reputational damage.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
The ASA had been contacted by several writers about the Bendigo Writers Festival code of conduct by Friday afternoon.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Corrie Perkin, organiser of Sorrento Writers Festival, said her event did not have a code of conduct and she would not consider using one.<\/p>\n
“[Writers festivals] are places where people are up for provocations and sometimes uncomfortable discussions,” she said.<\/p>\n
‘Patronising’ move<\/p>\n
Bendigo Writers Festival joins a string of arts and cultural events caught in controversy relating to the Israel-Gaza war, including recent Sydney and Melbourne writers festivals.<\/p>\n
Samuel Cairnduff from the University of Melbourne’s School of Culture and Communication said it was a “really worrying trend”.<\/p>\n
“I’m surprised they haven’t learnt from the playbooks of all these other incidences that we’ve seen in the past couple of years,” he said.<\/p>\n
Dr Cairnduff said by nature, writers festivals invited controversy and challenged people, but organisers should not bend to risk aversion.<\/p>\n
“When arts organisations make these decisions on behalf of their audiences, it’s a kind of patronising move,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Our courage and our confidence to bravely have these conversations with stakeholders in these situations is what needs to really come up a notch.”<\/p>\n
A further line in the Bendigo Writers Festival code of conduct, referring to sponsor La Trobe University’s panels only, called for compliance with the university’s anti-racism plan, including contested definitions of antisemitism and Islamaphobia.<\/p>\n
La Trobe University said in a statement it supported a “diversity of perspectives and ideas”.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“As a sponsor of the Bendigo Writers Festival (BWF), which is hosted by the City of Greater Bendigo, La Trobe University supports the BWF to have measures in place to ensure respectful exchange of views as well as community safety, and notes that codes of conduct are not unusual at writers festivals,” it said.<\/p>\n
Bendigo Writers Festival ticketholders have been told they will automatically be refunded for cancelled events.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Rosemary Sorensen was the founding director of the festival for 15 years until it was taken over by Bendigo council in 2024.<\/p>\n
“The worst thing that could happen is for this to destroy Bendigo Writers Festival,” she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An author who was among dozens who withdrew from this weekend’s Bendigo Writers Festival says it is a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":71375,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,55983,55981,55984,18612,55986,55982,55985,44],"class_list":["post-71374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australian-society-of-authors","tag-bendigo-writers-festival","tag-code-of-conduct","tag-freedom-of-speech","tag-greater-bendigo-city-council","tag-jess-hill","tag-la-trobe-university","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71374\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}