Christina Stead, and Nettie Palmer, the Australian delegates to the Congress of Writers for the Defence of Culture, presented a report strongly protesting against the Australian book censorship, declaring that taking advantage of the distance from Europe the Government was banning books which would keep the Australians in touch with the potential English and European thought. Customs officials, even if scarcely able to read their own name, were empowered to ban what books they chose. The report declared the censorship was in the hands of the Minister for Customs and military gentlemen, who were not in the front rank of literary men, and demanded that the worth of books should be judged by Australian literary readers, and not politicians.
They urged the Congress to send a protest at once.
First published in The Canberra Times, 27 June 1935
[Thanks to the National Library of Australia's newspaper digitisation project for this piece.]
