cancellation of the event.<\/a><\/p>\n“For the past week since I was cancelled by the Adelaide Festival Board, the South [Australian] Premier Peter Malinauskas has made many public statements about me and my character,” she wrote in her statement today.<\/p>\n
“We have never met and he has never attempted to contact me.<\/p>\n
“Yesterday Mr Malinauskas went even further. He made a public statement. This was a vicious personal assault on me, a private citizen, by the highest public official in South Australia. It was defamatory and it terrified me.<\/p>\n
“Enough is enough. I am a human being, not a punching bag. My lawyers have today issued a concerns notice under the Defamation Act on Peter Malinauskas, This is his opportunity to undo some of the harm he has inflicted and stop punching down.”<\/p>\n
![\"In](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/4JUT7VE_16d51b18ebc28d6a8fa660263721ab22_avif.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
\nIn a press conference at Port Augusta, Peter Malinauskas says all his comments are on public record.
\nPhoto: Supplied \/ABC News\n<\/p>\n
The action is in response to comments made by Malinauskas at a press conference on Tuesday in which he asked reporters to imagine if a “far-right Zionist walked into a Sydney mosque and murdered 15 people”.<\/p>\n
“Can you imagine that as premier of this state I would actively support a far-right Zionist going to Writers’ Week and speaking hateful rhetoric towards Islamic people,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Of course I wouldn’t but the reverse has happened in this instance and I’m not going to support that either and I think that’s a reasonable position for me to have. It’s a view that I believe.”<\/p>\n
Today at a press conference in Port Augusta, Malinauskas said he was not aware if a concerns notice had been received.<\/p>\n
“Every step of this journey, all of my remarks and indeed actions, have been founded in a desire for compassion and people treating each other civilly and people will be able to judge my remarks on themselves,” Malinauskas said.<\/p>\n
“All of my remarks and all of my comments are on the public record and people will see that they’re founded in a place of compassion and in the pursuit of decency towards one another.”<\/p>\n
He said the furore over the festival board’s decision to exclude Abdel-Fattah “have been unfortunate”.<\/p>\n
“I’ve been very transparent about my views of things and the board has made independent decisions of themselves,” he said.<\/p>\n
![\"Peter](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/4JUT7VE_6e9536703ff78fda6c763cce613b14b9_avif.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
\nPeter Malinauskas became emotional on Tuesday when questioned on a range of topics, including the festival and homophobia in sports.
\nPhoto: Supplied \/ABC News\n<\/p>\n
During Tuesday’s press conference, the premier became emotional when journalists pressed him on a range of topics including AWW and allegations of homophobia against Adelaide United.<\/p>\n
Following Abdel-Fattah’s removal from the AWW program, dozens of writers and at least one sponsor withdrew from the event.<\/p>\n
By Sunday, three board members and its chair had quit.<\/p>\n
The AWW director Louise Adler, who is on the Jewish Council of Australia’s advisory committee and is the daughter of Holocaust survivors, issued her resignation on Tuesday and the participants who pulled out increased to more than 180.<\/p>\n
– ABC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Stephanie Richards and Josephine Lim, ABC Randa Abdel-Fattah’s lawyers have issued a concerns notice to Peter Malinauskas.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":232891,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[48,47,42,43,49,46,44,45,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-232890","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-audio","9":"tag-current-affairs","10":"tag-headlines","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-podcasts","13":"tag-public-radio","14":"tag-radio-new-zealand","15":"tag-rnz","16":"tag-top-news","17":"tag-top-stories","18":"tag-topnews","19":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232890","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232890"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232890\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/232891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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<\/p>\n