The ABC and Creative Australia panicked in the face of controversy. These vital institutions must not be so timid | Margaret Simons

In the Lattouf and Sabsabi cases, the apparently unmanageable sensitivity was discussion of Israel and Palestine

“The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”

So wrote the poet William Butler Yeats, reflecting on “the blood-dimmed tide” of European politics after the first world war and the beginning of the Irish war of independence.

He nailed it.

At the very moment when some of us are prepared to go to the barricades, to demean and decry and even assault those with whom we disagree, others become timid.

These twin tides have been visible this week as two of our most important cultural institutions – the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Creative Australia – have each been revealed as having greatly mismanaged their jobs, in the context of fearing controversy.

The cases have common threads.

The ABC was found by the federal court to have unlawfully sacked journalist Antoinette Lattouf because of her political opinions opposing the Israeli military campaign in Gaza. This in the context of a letter writing campaign against her, and an imminent critical article in News Limited’s The Australian.

Creative Australia, on the other hand, released a report into its 13 February decision to withdraw a commission to artist Khaled Sabsabi to represent Australia at the 2026 Venice Biennale.

The rushed withdrawal happened on the day that questions were asked in parliament about Sabsabi’s previous work, which featured images of the late Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. And, again, there was to be an article in The Australian.

The cancellation of Sabsabi provoked waves of outrage in the international arts community. With the release of this week’s report, Creative Australia has reversed its reversal and reinstated Sabsabi.

In both cases, there was mismanagement. The ABC hired Lattouf, without having checked her social media posts on Palestine. Then, under pressure, they ended up sacking her even though she had not breached ABC editorial policies and not disobeyed any directives.

The essence of the report on Creative Australia is that it failed to prepare for the possible controversy about Sabsabi. The report suggests that if Creative Australia had only muscled up in preparation, it would never have wavered.

Instead, faced with the heat, both organisations panicked.

How did we become so timid? It wasn’t always so.

In 2013 the ABC launched its Fact Check service and appointed journalist Russell Skelton to lead it.

Then managing director Mark Scott got a bollocking in Senate Estimates from Coalition senator Eric Abetz because, before he joined the ABC, Skelton had retweeted descriptions of Barnaby Joyce as “a dense, opportunistic carpetbagger” and Tony Abbott as an extremist.

Abetz had taken Scott by surprise. There was a frantic review of Skelton’s social media, but Scott said that Skelton would be judged, not on his political opinions or things he had said and done before joining the ABC, but on his work from that point forward. Skelton remained in place.

More recently, the ABC received 1,832 complaints – far more than were received about Lattouf – about Stan Grant’s coverage of King Charles’s coronation, in which he said the crown represented invasion and the theft of Indigenous land.

Grant later said he felt unsupported by the ABC through this controversy and betrayed by the earlier, sycophantic coverage of the queen’s funeral.

But the ABC did not sack him, and its independent ombudsman said of the coronation coverage “While the program canvassed difficult topics it was at all times conducted respectfully … there were no errors of accuracy.”

None of these issues are simple. Particularly not for the ABC, which has statutory obligations of impartiality. These sit in tension with the federal court’s finding.

Sabsabi’s case is different. It is the job of artists to confront us, express complex ideas and even, sometimes, revolt us. What use is Creative Australia if it doesn’t defend such artistic practice?

All right-minded organisations try to make their workforce more diverse. But are we going to accept people from different ethnic and political backgrounds only to the extent that they behave like middle class white people?

That is, those who dominate our culture largely as a result of their luck, and who have not got a family legacy of colonisation, war, trauma and holocaust?

In the Lattouf and Sabsabi cases, the apparently unmanageable sensitivity was discussion of Israel and Palestine, in the context of the alarming resurgence of that light sleeper, antisemitism.

This is very hard. But not unique.

There have been many uncomfortable debates in our past. But now there is a new notion abroad – the concept of “safe spaces”. Writers’ festival chairs have resigned and speakers have been barred from speaking, all in the interests of defending such “safety”.

The term emerged from second wave feminism. It referred to the need for women to be able to attend, and be heard, in physical safety and without being verbally abused, disrespected or belittled. Rightly, the idea was extended to other groups who have suffered discrimination and to the workplace.

People at work can no longer get away with shouting at each other. (Instead, as any participant in a university faculty meeting knows, we have rampant passive aggression.)

But the notion of safe spaces was always about opening up participation. It was never meant to suggest that people had the right to feel comfortable, or to avoid hearing views with which they disagree. It was meant to create a space within which uncomfortable conversations could be had – not to close them down.

I want to advocate a new concept. We should build and defend brave spaces.

Australian laws rightly ban hate speech – meaning discrimination, vilification or injury on the basis of skin colour, national origin and race.

But within those parameters, let us be brave and robust in the face of views with which we disagree, even if they horrify us or make us weep.

Our national broadcaster should be a brave space. So, too, our arts organisations, universities and writers’ festivals.

This cuts all ways. Too often, people broadly self-identifying as left are quick to argue for controversial views to be aired, and quick to “de-platform” (surely one of the ugliest of modern verbs) the views of those on the right.

Within these brave spaces, let us be courageous enough to brush off the irritations of the drearily predictable News Limited campaigns. And let us try to avoid self-righteousness.

Sometimes, encounters in brave spaces might lead to us changing our minds, or question our own assumptions.

And that, perhaps, will be the bravest thing of all.

• Margaret Simons is an award-winning freelance journalist and author. She is an honorary principal fellow of the Centre for Advancing Journalism and a member of the board of the Scott Trust, which owns Guardian Media Group