'Authors are always put at the centre of Australia’s copyright debates, grounding claims for more rights or fewer exceptions. Despite that, our law has no explicit rights to protect authors in the case of unfair, unclear or outdated contacts. I criticised this state of affairs in the last spring issue of Overland, making a case for Australia finally joining the majority of the world’s nations by granting authors appropriate baseline protections.' (Introduction)
'In August of last year, an email popped up in my inbox from Andrew McGahan. I hadn’t seen Andrew in a while so it took me by surprise. Then I read the subject line – ‘The Big C’. A few days later I flew to Melbourne and drove a hire car to his house in Sunshine. I parked up the street, walked down to his house on the corner, and Andrew met me at the door. I was shocked at how thin he was. I knew he had been leading a healthier lifestyle, but the illness was also clearly starting to take hold. In the kitchen, he made me a cup of tea and I asked him whether he was sure of his diagnosis. Perhaps the doctors had made a mistake; I was only half-joking.' (Introduction)
