At the end of his life, Martin was sustained by his nephews and nieces, and in 1971, the year before he died, he received a lifetime pension of $30 a week courtesy of Gough Whitlam and The Commonwealth Writers Fund. In his will he appointed his nephew, my dad, as his literary executor (if you haven’t got a literary executor yet, hurry up and find one. There’s some good advice about it on the ASA website). At the time of his death, most of Martin Boyd’s books were out of print. Though my father knew nothing about publishing, he wanted to honour his uncle’s memory by seeking republication of Martin’s work. 

Sometime in 1973, a battered tin trunk arrived at our family home in Melbourne. It contained Martin Boyd’s publishing contracts and the remains of his papers – what he hadn’t burnt on the beach in Rome. I can still see my dad kneeling on the floor in front of that trunk; dog-eared contracts scattered around him. He was holding open a little blue book. It was the ASA’s first Guide to Contracts, published in 1967. Because one of the first things my father did when he learned he was responsible for his uncle’s copyright, was to join the ASA as an Associate member.

I remember my dad rocking back on his heels, holding the blue book open in one hand and one of Martin’s old contracts in the other, shouting in horror: ‘Listen to this, kids! It says here… (on page 26): In very general terms a floor royalty is 10 per cent of the retail price upon every copy sold in the territories for which it is licenced.’

Many of Martin Boyd’s contracts paid him 3%, and some as little as 1.5%, and that was before the colonial royalty decimated his royalty payments. 

For years I carried around this little blue book and its companion red volume, which was a brief history of the early years of the ASA. They were a beautiful little pair. They filled me with hope and optimism about the possibility of a life in books. It took me 25 years from when I pilfered the books from my father to when I signed my first contract. I joined the ASA as soon as I could. But I’d signed close to 20 contracts before I put my hand up to join the ASA board. I was overdue to give back for the many benefits I’d received from their advocacy.

Every minute I gave to the ASA was given in gratitude for all the hard-won rights the ASA has fought to secure for Australian writers. I learned so much working with the Board and staff of the ASA and the Copyright Agency: about the importance of good policy and the tenacity and collective action required to make real change happen. Books, cultural change, and good policy can’t be made in isolation – they require collective effort. 

Earlier this year, I read Jenny Macklin’s political memoir Making Good Policy – a book I never would have picked up but for my time on the ASA Board. At one point in Macklin’s book, she quotes the unionist Bill Kelty and his words leapt off the page to me as a truth about both politics and culture:

‘Power, if you look at the Mississippi, is a great river stream. The reason it’s a river stream is that it’s got all these tributaries, and they’ve got all these ideas and all these things flowing into it. Power is all of these things… And it’s a whole lot of people. Power is a whole lot of people and I’m just one of them, you know. And sometimes you’re slightly bigger here and slightly lesser there. But what you are is, by yourself, not much. Not much. You’re just a tiny little stream…’

I was sad that Kelty referenced the Mississippi rather than the Murray. In many ways, the Murray Darling Basin is a perfect metaphor for the power, complexity, and fragility of Australian culture. As Australian writers, we still have a lot of work to do to embed Australian landscapes in popular imagination so they can be conjured in speech as readily as the landscapes of empires. All Australians have a lot to learn from the traditional owners about how to love, honour, and care for this country.

To make a single book is an achievement but to make a life in books you need to make a body of work. To fight for a single policy is a good thing but to implement real change you need to fight on multiple fronts, and to keep fighting to push each win over the line. 

Most books are written in solitude but to bring a book into the world and to its readers takes a team. I have been fortunate to work with good publishers – thank you Allen & Unwin – and blessed to be supported by a wide group of friends, family, and comrades-in-arms. It’s hard to sustain a life in books if you don’t have the support of the people around you and the camaraderie of other writers. 

I’m a writer because of the writers I’ve loved, both through their books and their presence in my life. I’m a writer because of the writers who have loved my work and loved me as a person.

We are nothing without each other. We don’t amount to anything. My books don’t amount to anything, my work doesn’t amount to anything, and I don’t amount to anything as a writer without my readers, my publishers, my family, my friends, everyone in this room, and the solidarity of the 4,231 members of the ASA. Thank you. Thank you to everyone who has advocated for another writer, bought them a coffee when they realised they’ve earnt nothing from a book they spent three years creating, celebrated their work, and picked them up when they’ve fallen down. 

And thank you to my beloved Ken Harper for being by my side for 30 years while I wrote, wrangled, and advocated. This medal is as much his as it is mine.