Les Murray attacks PM’s decision to overrule judges and split $80,000 prize between Carroll’s work and Richard Flanagan’s ‘pretentious and stupid book’
Controversy continues to swirl around the prime minister’s literary awards with poet Les Murray criticising Tony Abbott’s “nasty” intervention to share a top prize between two authors.
Abbott presented the $80,000 prize for fiction to Steven Carroll for A World of Other People, and Richard Flanagan for The Narrow Road to the Deep North in Melbourne on Monday. It later emerged that Abbott had stepped in at the last minute to overrule the judges, who wanted to award the prize to Carroll alone.
Abbott has final say over who gets the prize, according to the rules of the award: “The prime minister will make the final decision on the awarding of the awards, taking into account the recommendations of the judges.”
On Thursday, Murray, who was a judge on the fiction panel, labelled Flanagan’s novel about the Burma railway as a “pretentious and stupid book” and expressed his anger that Abbott “went behind the scenes and worked a swifty.”
He told the Australian the judges had no idea of the change until the night of the awards, and that a majority of the panel had “rejected” Flanagan’s book.
Murray told the Sydney Morning Herald it was “deeply offensive” to ask if politics had played a part in their choice.
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Abbott presented the $80,000 prize for fiction to Steven Carroll for A World of Other People, and Richard Flanagan for The Narrow Road to the Deep North in Melbourne on Monday. It later emerged that Abbott had stepped in at the last minute to overrule the judges, who wanted to award the prize to Carroll alone.
Abbott has final say over who gets the prize, according to the rules of the award: “The prime minister will make the final decision on the awarding of the awards, taking into account the recommendations of the judges.”
On Thursday, Murray, who was a judge on the fiction panel, labelled Flanagan’s novel about the Burma railway as a “pretentious and stupid book” and expressed his anger that Abbott “went behind the scenes and worked a swifty.”
He told the Australian the judges had no idea of the change until the night of the awards, and that a majority of the panel had “rejected” Flanagan’s book.
Murray told the Sydney Morning Herald it was “deeply offensive” to ask if politics had played a part in their choice.
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