Caroline Hughes:

Yuma everyone. For those of you that don't know me, my name is Caroline Hughes. I am one of many Ngunnawal Elders that have the cultural responsibility and privilege to provide Welcome to Country on our lands. I'd like to acknowledge my elder sister here this evening, Catherine Kindleysides. [Speaks in Ngunnawal]. "This place is Ngunnawal country, always was, always will be." And in the spirit of wellbeing and coming together, good evening everyone.

On behalf of my Elders and my Ngunnawal people, I warmly welcome everyone to Ngunnawal country. I especially welcome award-winning Tongan Australian writer, Winnie Dunn, who is delivering the 2026 Ray Mathew lecture. So looking forward to hearing you tonight, Winnie. I acknowledge Jo Ritale, the National Library team, and everyone gathered here or joining us online. I pay my respects to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples joining us this evening.

Ngunnawal people have cared for this country across countless generations. Our stories, knowledge and language connects us to these hills, waterways and places. They teach us who we are, where we belong, and our responsibilities to each other. Dhawura, country, is a living relationship. Our ngadyung, our waters, are living spiritual entities, sustaining life and carrying connections between people and places. Through our beautiful language, song, ceremony, and the teaching of our Elders, we continue to pass this knowledge to future generations.

Tonight, Winnie's asking, does representation still matter? For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, this question touches how we are seen, how our children understand themselves, and whether our knowledge and experiences are respected. Many published accounts of our lives have been written by others. Too often, our people have been described without being heard and our knowledge interpreted without the guidance of those responsible for it. Having the opportunity to tell our own stories brings agency, dignity, and responsibility. It allows us to share our experiences in our own voices while respecting the cultural authority and permissions that guide what can be shared. The responsibility also extends to those who publish, collect, and use our stories. Who makes those decisions? Whose knowledge informs them? And do the people connected to those stories remain and continue to remain part of the conversations?

Here at the amazing National Library, families and communities bring knowledge that gives collections meaning. Their voices can deepen our understanding, correct an account or reveal something that has been missing in the telling. So Winnie, Winnie's lecture invites us to consider who is published, why their work is selected, and whether writers have sustained opportunities to contribute to Australian literature. For a young person, finding a familiar family, community or experience in a book can affirm their life matters and their voices belong. Reading can also open a door into someone else's life, encouraging us to question our assumptions and recognise our shared humanity.

As a Ngunnawal Elder, I want our children to hear our language, recognise their families and country, and know that they can carry our knowledge forward with pride, not always available to us and for us when we were children. I also want my children and grandchildren to encounter the stories of others with much curiosity and respect.

Winnie, I welcome the perspective that you are bringing through your writing, supporting the voices that enrich our understanding of Australia. In my own life, I practise Yindyamarra, a beautiful, beautiful word and concept that exists in the Ngunnawal and Wiradjuri languages, which means respect, listening to understand, not to respond, respect for my Elders, my community, our country, and the people with whom we share this place, Australia. I invite all of you to bring that respect to your listening tonight. Consider whose stories have shaped your own understanding, whose voices you have yet to hear, and how we can create opportunities for those voices to be heard.

Everyone may this evening encourage thoughtful conversation and a deeper appreciation of those beautiful stories entrusted to all of us. [Speaks in Ngunnawal]. "This place is Ngunnawal country. Always was, always will be." [Speaks in Ngunnawal]. Thank you.

Jo Ritale:

Thank you, Auntie Caroline, for welcoming us so warmly onto your country. As always, it's a pleasure to have you here at the National Library and to hear your thoughtful words.

Good evening everyone, and welcome to all of you who are here in person, but we also have a lot of people joining us online, so welcome to you as well. As Auntie Caroline said, my name is Jo. I'm the Assistant Director-General of Collections here at the National Library of Australia, and I'm delighted to welcome you all tonight for the 17th Ray Mathew Lecture. It's also lovely to see so many members of the Tongan community in the audience tonight, including the Tongan Language School based here in Canberra.

The Ray Mathew flagship lecture began in 2009 as a major annual event for the National Library of Australia and is generously funded by the Ray Mathew and Eva Kollsman Trust. It is named in honour of the Australian poet and playwright, Ray Mathew, who spent the first 30 years of his life in Australia and the last overseas, mostly in New York. True to its namesake, the objective of the Ray Mathew lecture is to support and promote Australian writing. Previous lecturers have included Geraldine Brooks, Andrea Goldsmith, Thomas Keneally, Morris Gleitzman, and Christos Tsiolkas.

This year, we are thrilled to be welcoming Winnie Dunn, a trailblazing voice in Australian literature. Winnie is a Tongan-Australian author from Mount Druitt in Sydney. She is the general manager of Sweatshop Literacy Movement, which provides training, mentoring, and employment opportunities for both emerging and established writers from First Nations and non-English speaking backgrounds. Winnie has edited several acclaimed anthologies, including 'Brownface', 'Sweatshop Women', 'Straight Up Islander' and 'Another Australia.' Her debut novel, 'Dirt Poor Islanders', as you can see here on the table, won the 2025 Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Novelists Award and the 2025 Creative Australia Kathleen Mitchell Award. 'Dirt Poor Islanders' was also shortlisted for two New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards and the prestigious Miles Franklin Literary Award.

Winnie is not only an award-winning author and advocate, but also a generous contributor to the National Library's Pacific Peoples of Australia Collecting Project. Communities with ancestral ties to the Pacific have settled in Australia over generations, and these diasporas have grown significantly since the mid 20th century. People with Pacific heritage have contributed significantly to Australia's historical and cultural landscape. The Library is working to ensure that these stories are told by Pacific voices and can be preserved by the National Library with diaspora communities for future generations.

Tonight, Winnie's lecture will contend with an important and timely question, does representation still matter? She will examine the original promise of representation in literature, who made it and why, and whether it has delivered on its offers of recognition, reflection, and social rapport. At the heart of this conversation is a larger question, "What is Australian literature now and what will make it matter?" It is my pleasure to welcome our 2026 Ray Mathew lecturer, Winnie Dunn. Please join me in welcoming Winnie to the stage.

Winnie Dunn:

[Unclear] As a person with ties to the indigenous people of Tonga, I excuse my presence on this land, the land of the Ngunnawal people, people who have been and always will be the traditional custodians of Canberra. Canberra, the meeting place on which we are gathered here today. [Unclear] I pay my respects to Elders, past, present, emerging, and to any Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who are here or listening in right now. [Unclear] Indigenous people are the world's original storytellers. I recognise with reverence that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have been telling stories since time immemorial. Sovereignty was never ceded. This was and always will be Aboriginal land. [Unclear].

The purpose of the annual Ray Mathew lecture is to support and promote Australian writing. Many months ago when I was asked to give this year's lecture, I pondered on a plain looking question, "What is Australian writing?" From there, I broke it down into two parts. "What is writing?" "What is Australia?" The first question I could answer with some confidence, this is because of my bachelor's degree, which included a major in English literature as well as my decade-long employment as a writer, editor, and arts worker in the field of humanities. So what is writing? Writing is the recorded use of symbols to represent a language. Great. But then two other much more nebulous questions popped up for me. "Does that definition also cover what good writing is?" "What is good writing?" Suddenly, I was in a laborious back and forth with myself. "What is good writing?" Literature. "What is literature?" An original contribution to knowledge. "How does a writer make an original contribution to knowledge?" A writer needs to use symbols that represent a language to convey an idea that no one has ever read before. "What is reading?" To make meaning of the symbols of a written language. "What is writing?" "What is reading?" "What is literature?" Too many of us in academia and the arts just assume we're all on the same page with these ones, pun intended. So I am speaking to everyone tonight on the following foundations. Symbols such as letters are put together to form words. Writing. If someone puts those words together and even pulls them apart again, we get meaning. Reading. If the meaning constructs an original idea, the writing is of high quality. Literature.

So what about that second question I had asked myself? "What is Australia?" And as an extension of that, "Who is Australian?" To be honest, it terrifies me to try and answer. There's no definitive definition I can give, quite the opposite. But I believe each individual connected to this complicated continent must make their own meaning in response.

For some, and hopefully all one day, Australia is always was, always will be, rather than Captain Cook's definition, which was 'terra nullius' or no man's land. For Pauline Hansen and her ilk, Australia seems to be one cultural umbrella that needs to exclude people who are born overseas and speak languages other than English. Today, while Hansen's popularity rises in the polls, it has been over 50 years since the 1973 Melbourne conference where then immigration minister Al Grassby launched the idea of a cosmopolitan and multicultural Australia, an idea he coined as 'family of the nation.' Al Grassby said, "In a family, the overall attachment to the common good need not impose a sameness on the outlook or activity of each member, nor need these members deny their individuality and distinctiveness in order to seek a superficial and unnatural conformity." In short, practising your culture means you're practising being Australian. How nice, right? But then I think of Professor Ghassan Hage, one of this country's most esteemed anthropologists who defines Australia as "a fantasy position born out of a colonial history that is essentially European." In his 1998 essay collection, 'White Nation', which was republished in 2023 as 'The Racial Politics of Australian Multiculturalism', Hage argues that both labour and liberals celebratory rhetoric on multiculturalism poorly masks a deep sense of racial hierarchy and white supremacy in Australia.

Those who consider themselves white in Australia assume the position of facilitator of the nation, deciding who can stay, e.g. the grateful migrant, or who should go, e.g. boat people. In reality, my brown freckled afro-haired grandmother from the Tongan village of Malapo, who slaved away at the old Strathfield Arnott's Biscuit Factory is Australian, whether someone as well-meaning as Al Grassby or as bad faith as Pauline Hanson accepts it or not.

For a person like me who was born into a large family that included one Tongan grandparent and one English grandparent on my biological father's side, one Tongan grandparent and one English grandparent on my biological mother's side, and two Tongan grandparents on my adopted mother's side, I define Australia as a hyphen. It connects my birthland and ancestral mother lands. Birth cannot exist without the mother. I see myself as Tongan-Australian. I see Professor Ghassan Hage as Lebanese-Australian. I see Pauline Hansen as heaps-racist.

Now I want to bring the words writing and Australia together. What is the definition of Australian writing? Is it just any writing by anyone on the subject of Australia or can the writing be about anything so long as the writer was born in Australia? Perhaps the definition needs to be stricter as in Australian writing is writing about Australia by a person who has lived in Australia a majority of their lives and still lives here?

Ray Mathew, may he rest in peace, may very well disagree with such a hyper-specific definition. The poet, novelist, playwright, and literary critic of whom this lecture series is named after is well known for permanently leaving Australia. Ray Mathew wrote very glowingly of his life in New York in a letter to a fellow Australian artist, Pixie O'Harris, "I have probably not been happier in my life. There are people here I like immensely. I'm 40. I feel very grown up." Mathew's close friend, Kate Jennings, attested to this in her own lecture. "I don't think he even considered Australia home. Ray had a full and satisfying life on the Upper East Side of Manhattan."

Since the inaugural Ray Mathew lecture in 2009, many great writers connected to this complicated continent have spoken at length about the idea of exploration, expatriation and exile between Australia and the rest of the world. Again, Kate Jennings who gave this lecture in 2010 also said, "I shall never forget my early years in New York and finding for the first time that I didn't have to defend my ambitions or be on either the defensive or the offensive as a woman." Geraldine Brooks said, "It's a gift to travel, a boon to be able to go abroad and get the feel for other rhythms, different seasons, foreign souls." Susan Johnson said, "I became an expatriate, not because I was repulsed by my country, but because I wanted something else, something strange and difficult and dangerous, something Australia did not appear to have."

"Something that Australia did not appear to have." It is this notion of lack that I want to focus on now. In a 2015 Sydney Morning Herald article titled 'Why Do Australians Travel So Much?', journalist Ben Groundwater wrote, "Back to the days of cultural cringe, 20 or 30 or 40 years ago, there was a common belief among Australians that our culture wasn't up to scratch on a global scale, that our history wasn't much to be proud of, and our homogenous cities and towns weren't very interesting to explore. To properly educate yourself, you had to leave. In fact, it still lingers, this idea that the things we have in Australia aren't as good as the things other people have overseas."

Granted, some self-hatred from the people who benefit from this colony is legitimate and necessary. Consider Australia's most recent decision to reject an indigenous Voice to Parliament. Such a pathetic outcome should haunt us forevermore. Shame. Nevertheless, as a writer living in Australia, I must admit that our national sense of 'lack' and 'cultural cringe', this sense that something is missing in us, that we are not enough, is simultaneously heartbreaking and enthralling.

Last Saturday night, I was walking down a packed-with-people Pitt Street in the heart of Sydney city. I strolled past the colonial sandstone of Central Station. Sydney Sky Tower pierced the polluted stars, the coloured glass panes of Queen Victoria building glittered in the street lights. Further down was the Harbour Bridge holding the Aboriginal flag parallel to the Australian flag. And of course, those strange white-winged tips recognised around the world as the Sydney Opera House. And all the while, a busker's voice stalked me, singing a song by Alicia Keys and Jay-Z. "Now you're in New York. Concrete jungle, where dreams are made of. These lights will inspire you. Let's hear it for New York, New York, New York." I was stunned. How could this busker be in the middle of one of the most beautiful cities and harbours in the world (which is often confused by tourists as the capital of Australia)? Sorry, not sorry, Canberra, and be singing so boldly about New York? I wanted to scream, "Oy dingbat, you're in Sydney!"

Scrambling back to my car, I returned to my hometown on the other end of Sydney, Mount Druitt, the place literature goes to die, or so I thought growing up and as an aspiring writer from the area. On this other end of Sydney, back in time, my primary school librarian kept a special and locked display cabinet filled with British and American titles like 'Harry Potter' and 'A Series of Unfortunate Events.' Meanwhile, media was playing the following on public free-to-access television. One: 'Plumpton High Babies', an ABC-funded documentary series about the excessive rates of teenage pregnancies at my local high school. Two: 'Struggle Street', an SBS-funded documentary series where the opening credits show off a picturesque and iconic Sydney Harbour Bridge, zooms through the city and then lands on a heavily graffitied welcome to Mount Druitt sign while a fart noise plays in the background. And of course, Australia's most watched show in 2008, 'Summer Heights High', where a white man in brownface used a thick FOB ['Fresh Off the Boat'] accent to act as a Pacifica public school child who was hypersexual, illiterate and violent.

These were my first lessons in representation, the stories of people like me were not considered literature. Such esteem was reserved for international destinations or the realm of fantasy. As for my neighbourhood and my ethnicity, I was poverty porn and minstrel theatrics. I was the butt of whiter and wealthier people's jokes living in the ass-end of Australia. But then I grew up and I started to ask myself, "How could that be it?" Western Sydney holds 2.9 million residents. 46% speak a language other than English. 20% identify as First Nations and 37% are under 19 years old. Western Sydney is the multicultural cosmopolitan that Al Grassby dreamed Australia would be way back in the '70s. Diversity-wise, Western Sydney is on par with New York. In Sydney city, our Opera House is as recognisable as the Empire State Building. And on a nation-to-nation scale, the Grand Canyon is considered a Wonder of the World, but so too is the Great Barrier Reef. What gives?

Now that I'm here giving this lecture, I can only conclude that our cultural cringe is not just some ironic yet harmless tune from a street busker. It is a corrosive substance that has eroded our sense of self. None of us truly subscribe to the Aussie icons of blonde haired surfers or fair dinkum farmers. In fact, the statistics on diversity in Western Sydney alone demonstrate the opposite of such stereotypes. But instead of representing our complex realities on this complicated continent, we yell at our brown politicians to piss off back to Pakistan while we daydream about living in Manhattan, London, Paris, or Berlin.

Even our heads of state are not immune to our sense of cultural cringe. The autobiography of our 25th Prime Minister, John Howard, is titled 'Lazarus Rising.' I haven't even opened the book yet and there's a problem. Lazarus was a close friend of Jesus, both men from ancient Middle Eastern origins, both in the land we now know as Palestine. Last I checked, Howard is not any one of these people or places. Rather, he's descended from a British convict that got shipped to New South Wales in 1816 for stealing a watch. For argument's sake, let's just say old Howie was using poetic licence in his book title. I don't know if he's really that adept at metaphors, but sure. I opened the book and found that when Howard wasn't dreaming of being Middle Eastern, he was fantasising about his best bud, America. How else does one explain why Howard devotes an entire chapter to George W. Bush, the 43rd President of the United States in his 720 page tome, citing Bush 38 times in just the index? Meanwhile, in Bush's own 544 paged autobiography titled 'Decision Points', Howard is named a total of three times, and one of those times is just a footnote. The kids in my primary school put it best. Why does John Howard have thick eyebrows? Because he loves Bush.

But whichever way you trim it, the relationship between Australia and the rest of the world seems a little one-sided. So what to make of such a blatant discrepancy? Well, it seems that many Australians from our political leaders to some of our literary icons are still cringing. We're here tonight to discuss Australian writing. So let's investigate one of the nation's most prestigious literary prizes, the Miles Franklin, whose name is taken from an Australian author and whose central criteria is: "the novel of highest literary merit that represents Australian life in any of its phases." Over the Miles Franklin Award's near 70 year history, roughly 20.3% of the winning books were predominantly set overseas. This means that one in five books that have won the Miles Franklin, which is meant to be about Australian life, define Australian life outside of Australian life. Then there's the Stella Prize named after the same author as the Miles Franklin Award with a specific focus on women's writing. In the 14 years of the Stella Prize, at least 35.7% of winners wrote books, again, mostly set overseas. There is certainly a significant place for geographically diverse narratives in a country as culturally and linguistically eclectic as ours, but this cannot come from a self-hating desire to escape ourselves, from a corrosive substance that has deeply eroded our sense of self to the point where we do away with local culture entirely.

No matter which corner of the earth our stories may end up, we should always proudly and unashamedly as Australian writers allow them to spring forth from the suburbs of their birth, be that Mount Druitt or Maitland, Fitzroy or Fairfield, Pickering Brook or Penrith, Gepps Cross or Granville, Queanbeyan or Quakers Hill, Yass or Yagoona. But how can there be stories like these if our publishers are folding? In 2024, three smaller Australian publishing houses, Affirm Press, Text Publishing, and Pantera Press merged with bigger companies. Publisher and editor Alice Grundy described this pattern as a form of cannibalism, an alarming trend of the industry eating up itself. In an urgent article for books and publishing, Grundy wrote, "A big company views a merger as a quick way to increase market share and acquire backlist titles. For a small press, a merger can relieve cash flow and margin pressures. The concern for authors and by extension literary agents is that more mergers can mean fewer publishers, fewer publishing opportunities and less championing of local culture."

Grundy's sum is harrowing. Fewer publishers equal fewer opportunities equals less championing of local culture. As mainstream publishers gobbled up and doubled their back list of books, award-winning publisher, editor and author Terri-ann White finally asked the big question on everyone's mind, "Does Australia publish too many books?" In her widely read, discussed and debated article for ArtsHub, White wrote, "Australia has a population of around 27 million people, but roughly 22,000 new Australian books are released each year. Meanwhile, Australians and in particular younger Australians, are reading less than ever before. Sometimes when an industry sector starts to turn downwards, it cranks up the product supply, throwing it all at the wall and hoping some of it might stick." Point taken. Less publishers, less readers. Obviously we need less books. So who do we get rid of first?

As an author from one of Australia's most underrepresented cultural groups, the answer seems obvious. Cut back on the 1010th novel by a middle class white girl with an eating disorder or a wealthy white boy who has swallowed the universe and prioritise as many diverse voices, experiences and language techniques as possible. Keep the focus on the boundary pushing, groundbreaking and experimental literature of diverse Australian storytellers who are ushering our national literary canon into the future of so-called Australia. Alexis Wright, Melissa Lucashenko, Tony Birch, Michelle de Kretser, Randa Abdel-Fattah, Sarah Ayoub, Benjamin Law, Merlinda Bobis, Evelyn Araluen, Ghassan Hage, Mehreen Faruqi, Michelle Law, Omar Musa, Sisonke Msimang, Mirandi Riwoe, Michael Mohammed Ahmad, Nardi Simpson, Anne-Marie Te Whiu, Amani Haydar, Roanna Gonsalves, Micaela Sahhar, Jazz Money, and I could go on.

But can our big publishers commit to such a thing? In their 2024 'Atlantic' article titled 'Has the DEI Backlash Come for Publishing?', Professor Dan Sinykin and Professor Richard Jean So cited their 2020 study, which showed that from 1950 to 2018, 95% of books published from the American branches of Penguin, Pan Macmillan, Simon & Schuster and Harper Collins were written by white authors. Sinykin and Jean So continued that publishers were shocked by the results of their retrospective study, which was during the height of the Black Lives Matter movement, and therefore publishers made solemn social media posts about 'becoming the change' and promising to publish more black authors and authors of colour.

Barriers broken, racism resolved, right? Sadly, no. We've been here before. A spike in diversity in publishing only to roll back into the status quo. In that very same article in 'The Atlantic', Sinykin and Jean So depressingly point out the following: "The first spike that was the post-civil rights movement effort in the late 1960s slowed considerably by the mid '70s, leading to the removal of key figures such as Marie Brown from Doubleday in 1981 and Toni Morrison from Random House in 1983. The second spike began in the late '90s and petered out in the mid 2000s." With eerie clarity, the article goes on to describe a Sisyphean curse that is diversity publishing. Publishers announce the acquisitions brought in by editorial with fanfare, but publishers then fail to provide adequate investment in marketing, publicity and sales. The titles underperform and, set up to fail, provide publishers with an excuse to disinvest. Looking to the past areas of diversification in publishing, we find that the turning point comes about four years into the cycle, which is exactly where we are.

To break this curse, it is my plea to both publishers and the public. My plea is that we stop punishing the individual author for cost of living or work fatigue and instead focus on what you are cutting instead of who.

Reading republished Dramione fan fiction that just changes the character's names - enough. Anything with vampires, werewolves, mermaids, or modern Greek mythology takes - yawn. Another romanticy novel from TikTok, chuck it. An eat, pray, love memoir from an Aussie backpacker even - go back to where you came from, literally. Since the Black Lives Matter movement, tremendous progress has been made in Australia to centre new and uncharted Australian stories, which propel our knowledge, values, joy and literacy levels to higher grounds, replacing the endless pile of [unclear] slop with complex stories about our black history, our grey present, and our colourful future. Stories which explore the depths and widths of our linguistic flair and unusual vernaculars as a multiracial, multi-ethnic, multi-faith nation. Stories which embrace the idiosyncrasies of our local culture with titles like 'Carpenteria', 'Dropbear', 'The Lebs', and 'The Vape Lord of Queanbeyan'.

We need to start unapologetically seeing Australia in Australian writing. We just got to own it, mate, because we are a colonial nation that is less than 300 years old. We are also as ancient as time immemorial. Australia is globally recognised for its multiculturalism just as much as its racism. We do bloody fucking swear a lot. From 'arvo' to 'Mickey D's' to nicknaming Lakemba to 'Leb-kemba', we are masters of abbreviation and ending words in vowels. We should have a freaking national holiday for gifting the world with the word 'selfie'. The Penrith Panthers rugby team is named after Western Sydney's very own mythological creature. Fuck off, Bigfoot. Writing of local culture equals Australian literature and investment we need to treat as timeless. If we can move past our cultural cringe, we can see that every Australian is a microcosm of the entire world. We do not need to look beyond our own street corners to experience that world before, now, and after. We are here and we are more than enough, warts and all. It's just time we wax away those bushy eyebrows. Thank you.

Jo Ritale:

Okay, thank you, Winnie. That was a really thought provoking lecture. I was sort of listening intently, laughing intently in some spots. It was fantastic. Now we've got some time for questions. We are live streaming this presentation, so please wait for the microphone to reach you before you ask a question so those who are joining us online can hear that as well. And we've got a couple of people who have got microphones, so yeah, opening it up to questions.

Audience member 1:

Hi, Winnie. Awesome talk. Thank you.

Winnie Dunn:

Thank you.

Audience member 1:

You mentioned at the end there, the books, I suppose, that you don't really want to see published anymore. I agree. How do you overcome that tension where some of those often are bestsellers and as the publishing industry is cannibalising itself and disappearing, that might be all that's selling meaningfully. How do you balance that, the social value, I suppose, of having different voices, particularly Australian ones, exciting Australian ones, versus is it profitable?

Winnie Dunn:

Well, I think that 'Atlantic' article by those two professors really highlights the problem, which is the fact that publishers deliberately choose not to invest in diversity publishing even when they say they are, and they deliberately, even if it's unconsciously or subconsciously, set them up to fail. And so publishers really need to look at themselves and start to really put all the money that they put towards those kinds of bestsellers into the stories that actually represent Australian local culture and its multi-ethnic, multi-faith reality, because that's what Australia is. I'm the only Pacific Islander that can't sing, so I'm really sorry about the Alicia Keys song, but I really think it showcases that if you invest in artists that are singing about their city or are singing about their culture, eventually it will become global and it will become a cosmopolitan identity.

Audience member 2:

Thank you, Winnie. That was such an interesting lecture. I was just wondering if you could tell us more about the Sweatshop Literacy Movement and your role there and what is going on there?

Winnie Dunn:

Yeah, thank you. So Sweatshop Literacy Movement is a literacy organisation dedicated to empowering First Nations writers and writers of colour through reading, writing, and critical thinking. We take our ethos from the African American intersectional feminist scholar, Bell Hooks, who says degrees of literacy determine how you see what you see. And so we're all about teaching others not only how to write their own stories in their own voices, but also how to read writing and books in general so that they can kind of see what is being represented and what is being showcased and then how they can respond to it.

And the best way that I can talk to that is my own experience of joining Sweatshop in 2016. I went to a creative writing class that was run by the student newspaper at the time of Western Sydney University, and I was the first person in my family to go to university, so everything was always really new and exciting for me. I saw for the first time this brown guy that kind of looked like my dad, but he was just wearing flared jeans and a beret and a bum bag. I was like, "This does not look like the teacher," but he was the teacher. His name was, at the time, just Michael Mohammed Ahmad, he was doing his PhD. He showed me for the first time, not only Australian writing, but specifically something that's called the Western Sydney Literary Canon. He was showing me these writings by these young people from schools that was just kind of graffiti that I read every day in the bathroom stall of Whalan Public School. And so I was so enthralled, I guess, by this notion that writing that I saw every day in my childhood in the bathroom was considered literature and could actually be studied and could actually be broken down and put back together to create meaning.

And so when I started to look at the representation of Tongans in Australia, the only thing I found was Chris Lilley who put on brown face paint and enacted this illiterate, racist, hypersexual stereotype of a Tongan child that has haunted Pacifica communities in Australia to this day. When Summer Heights High came out in 2008, I was 14, and I was laughing along with everyone else because my literacy was so low. I didn't understand what was actually happening, but through this process of going through the Sweatshop Literacy Movement and actually learning how to read and learning how to write and actually really clearly defining what is writing, what is reading, what is literature, I was then able to write 'Dirt Poor Islanders', which amazingly but sadly is Australia's first mainstream published novel written by a Tongan Australian about a Tongan Australian experience. I feel very lucky but very daunted by that and really it's my hope to give back through Sweatshop and through my work like this, what Dr Michael Mohammed Ahmad and Sweatshop gave me, which is being empowered to tell your own story and use your own voice and recognise that as part of the nation's literature.

And so next year I'm bringing out an anthology series titled 'FOB: Fresh Off the Books', and it features Pacifica Australian writers from around this very complicated continent, and I'm hoping to introduce Australia to these brilliant Pacifica writers that have existed here for generations.

Audience member 3:

Thank you so much, Winnie. I was just wondering, so based on your talk, a lot of the issue we know is in funding, the arts is not valued enough. If you had $5 million, where would you start? Is it starting with education of young children or schools or is it kind of helping publishers survive or is it giving basic income to writers so that they can do that instead of needing other work? Where would you see what would make the biggest difference to you based on what you can see?

Winnie Dunn:

I mean, so many things. I feel like you gave all the answers, so that's really great. But I wish one thing that Australia would copy the rest of the world on is basic income for creative writers and artists because that is the only way that our national literature is going to be made and could even survive is if we're giving the people who are creating it and expressing our local culture in these creative ways, if we are giving them the time and the resources to actually do it.

But obviously, and I say this in Canberra, I think there is a status quo of what Australia is that is being upheld and that deliberately involves cutting back on the arts and creative writing to the point where they've increased the fees and the ATAR scores required for a bachelor of arts degree. So like I said, I was the first person in my family to go to university and I actually needed all 10 free ATAR points that I got for living in Western Sydney in order to make the cutoff for my bachelor of arts degree. And now, if I was graduating high school now, even with all those 10 free ATAR points, I would still not be eligible for my bachelor of arts degree and I would be about $25,000 more in debt than I already am with the government.

So I think we as a nation really need to start advocating for artists and creative writers, especially those of us who are expressing local culture because otherwise we do become, I would say, kind of parallel to John Howard. Our sense of self is just covered by our bushy eyebrows as we stare at America. [Laughing] This is going to come...thanks.

Yeah, [unclear], thank you so much everyone for coming to this lecture and listening to me. I very much appreciate it. I also understand that I'm the youngest person, I think, to give this lecture and I am really grateful and thankful for that, but I also understand that young people can be a bit up themselves. So I really appreciate all the knowledge that has come before me in this lecture series and the knowledge and wisdom that is here in this room today to get me to be here. So thank you.

Jo Ritale:

So thank you everyone for your insightful questions. I had a question too, we didn't have time. I'll ask you later, Winnie.

Winnie Dunn:

At the book signing table?

Jo Ritale:

Definitely. That reminds me. But first, a few thank yous. So I'd like to thank the Ray Mathew and Eva Kollsman Trust for its generous support of the Ray Mathew lecture, ensuring that we can continue to have important conversations about Australian writing and culture.

If you would like to listen to Winnie's lecture again, a recording of tonight's event can be watched on the National Library's YouTube channel. And for those of you in the theatre tonight, I invite you to join us upstairs where we can continue having wonderful conversations over some light refreshments.

If tonight's lecture has piqued your interest, you can purchase a copy of 'Dirt Poor Islanders' in our bookshop upstairs, and Winnie will be available for book signings. Please join me again in one final round of applause for Winnie. Thank you.