Published: 13 January 2026
Last updated: 15 January 2026
Espousing your morals and ideas and living your life in alignment with them are two very different concepts.
Everyone wants to believe they are living a life of good decisions and moral fortitude, but in reality, there are lots of temptations that get in the way; sweet schadenfreude, the deliciousness of revenge, the hunger of greed, the power of ego, the pull of power or ambition and the list goes on.
Ultimately, it can be hard work to be the best person you can be, and I think in some respects, it should be.
Some of the most central tenets of social justice include centring lived experience, not talking over people who have skin in the game, recognising and listening when other people try to explain their identity and applying the same standards and humanity to all people, rather than engaging in selective judgement of who is deserving.
The left has been guilty of widespread hypocrisy over these values since October 7. I’ve watched the “rules of engagement” broken repeatedly by people I had previously called friends and colleagues and lost respect for so many people I previously admired.
Nowhere has this hypocrisy been more evident than in the work and writing of Randa Abdel-Fattah.
It therefore gives me not one iota of pleasure to write that pulling Randa Abdel-Fattah from the program of the Adelaide Writers' Week – and the way in which it was done – was a mistake.
She calls for the recognition of the humanity of her own people, while simultaneously dehumanising others
