STATEMENTS ON SIGNIFICANT MATTERS
Ms BELL (Moncrieff) (09:08): I rise to pay tribute to a great Australian and a fabulous Queenslander: the great literary statesman, David George Joseph Malouf AO. What a great life David lived—a full 92 years, during which David made a significant and enduring cultural contribution to our nation. David achieved this through his family, his literary works and his support of the literary community in Australia and around the world.
Born in Brisbane in 1934 to first-generation migrants to Australia, his father, George, was a Lebanese Melkite Christian and his mother, Welcome Wilhelmina, was English of Sephardic Jewish descent. They were hardworking small-business owners running a corner shop. During this time, David was educated at Brisbane Grammar School, where he studied French and Latin.
He then began studying law as a scholarship student at the University of Queensland before switching to study English, where he graduated with first-class honours—unsurprisingly—in 1955. After school, he worked as a teacher in Brisbane and London and lived for some time in Europe, and after his time abroad he lived in Sydney and lectured at the University of Sydney.
It was in 2017 that David continued to demonstrate his greatness by choosing to retire to the magnificent location of Surfers Paradise. During his life, he was a prolific writer of novels, poetry, essays, librettos, plays and short stories, working across genres with flair and with elegance. It has been said by many that David's writing was influenced by his multicultural origins, his upbringing in Brisbane during the Second World War, his mother's passion for her Englishness, and his intellect, with the Australian's culture critic Peter Craven describing David as 'arguably the most accomplished Australian writer of his generation' and as 'a modest man, but a man of immense culture', and the Australian's literary editor Stephen Romei, describing David as 'the understated grand statesman of Australian letters'.
David's writing is considered exceptional due to his selection of themes that have helped Australians rethink history, identity and connection to place, exploring complex themes of humanity, memory and understanding across cultures. His writing is often described as poetic because of its rich imagery and emotional depth, exploring the inner lives of his characters and the landscapes around them.
There was hardly a literary prize for which David was not considered. One of his most famous novels is Remembering Babylon, published in 1993. The story follows a young man who was raised by Aboriginal Australians and later struggles to fit back into colonial society.
Through this novel, David examines fear, prejudice and the divisions between cultures in Australia's colonial past. The book was internationally acclaimed and, in being so, helped bring Australian literature to a global audience. I'm going to read out the list of awards that it won: the inaugural International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for fiction, the Prix Femina Etranger, the Prix Baudelaire, the Commonwealth Writers Prize award for best book from the South-East Asia and South Pacific region, and the New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards Christina Stead Prize for Fiction.
And it was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. All for one book—extraordinary. Most authors might be content with one of those awards in their career, or indeed just to write one book.
David's other distinguished honours and awards included being made an Officer of the Order of Australia, receiving the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 2000, election as a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2008, and receiving an Australia Council Award for lifetime achievement in Australian literature in 2016. Throughout his entire life, he supported others in the literary world, including engaging with young authors.
Trent Dalton describes David as having given 'every Brisbane kid who ever owned a library card permission to dream beyond their bedroom, even beyond their front and backyard and maybe even down the street a bit and up the creek and all the way around the bend and around the world'. David was a passionate supporter of the arts and specifically of Opera Australia, Adelaide Writers Week and the Indigenous Literacy Foundation.
His literary agent, Jane Novak, said he was a 'kind, generous, wonderful man behind the masterpieces'. His prose publisher, Meredith Curnow, said: Everyone … loved working with David … He was committed to reading and supporting new Australian writers. If a nation's soul is expanded by its literature, then it follows that the body of work that David has left us with has certainly become part of the fabric of our nation.
In David's own words from his last novel, Ransom, which is part of some year 12 curriculums: 'Words are powerful. They too can be the agents of what is new, of what is conceivable and can be thought and let loose upon the world.' Australia has been enriched by David Malouf's life, and with his passing Australia will continue to be enriched for years to come through his great works.
Finally, in David's own words, this time from his novel An Imaginary Life, 'I now have a life that stretches beyond the limits of measurable time.' How fitting. Vale, David Malouf AO.