The Book Council of Australia is stuffed back on the rack

The BCA was probably doomed the moment Tony Abbott announced its creation out of Australia Council funds.
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In the 2006 throwaway romantic comedy Failure to Launch, Matthew McConaughey plays a funny, handsome, promising man who, deep into his thirties, just can’t leave home. Eventually, it turns out that he had suffered a calamitous loss many years before when his fiancée died. He was doomed from the outset; after the bad start, his pecker and promise are all gone.

So it is with the Book Council of Australia (BCA), which was long dreamed of – since 2010 in fact – by a kabal of publisher, bookseller, agent, and author organisations, and eventually endorsed by Labor, and then announced by Tony Abbott at last year’s Prime Minister’s Literary Awards.

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Stuart Glover
About the Author
Stuart Glover is a Senior Lecturer, Creative Writing at The University of Queensland.