Award‑winning author Craig Silvey has pleaded guilty to possessing and distributing child exploitation material, while a charge that he produced such material has been dropped.

Silvey, 43, was first charged in January after detectives from Western Australia police’s child abuse squad raided his Fremantle home, allegedly catching him communicating online with child exploitation offenders and seizing his electronic devices.

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The father of three was later hit with extra charges, including allegations he produced child exploitation material between February and June 2022, and possessed further material on 12 January this year.

Those two additional charges have now been discontinued, and Silvey has admitted the remaining counts of possessing and distributing child exploitation material linked to offences in January.

Silvey faced Fremantle magistrates court on Tuesday, when he entered guilty pleas.

The popular author is best known for his 2009 coming‑of‑age novel Jasper Jones, considered a modern Australian classic and adapted into a feature film and several stage productions.

He has also been widely recognised for other books, including Rhubarb, Honeybee – winner of the 2021 Australian Indie Book Award – and the children’s novel Runt, which was also made into a film.

Publishers Allen & Unwin and Fremantle Press, which released Rhubarb, stopped promoting his books after the original charges were laid and most of his titles were removed from reading lists across the country.

Silvey’s bail was continued, and he is next due to appear in the district court on 3 July for sentencing.

Global accounting giant KPMG has distanced itself from the Sydney writers’ festival, requesting its name be removed from the event’s website where it was listed as a corporate partner.

The move follows the festival scheduling Palestinian Australian academic Randa Abdel-Fattah to speak at two sessions in this year’s event.

A KPMG spokesperson confirmed the change on Thursday, telling the Guardian in a statement: “We are the auditor of the company, which we do not define as a ‘partner’. This is now reflected on their website.”

The spokesperson would not confirm whether the scheduling of Abdel-Fattah had prompted the move, but said the company had received calls expressing concern over this issue.

They confirmed that in previous years, KPMG had been comfortable with being described as a partner on the festival’s website.

KPMG has provided auditing services to SWF at a discounted rate since 2023.

The writers’ festival said in a statement that KPMG, according to the firm’s own statement, did not consider itself a partner of the event.

“The website now reflects this,” the festival said in a statement. “SWF have many wonderful partners and supporters, and we are grateful to all of them.”

Abdel-Fattah’s participation in literary events has become a flashpoint for the arts sector. In January the Adelaide writers’ week disinvited Abdel-Fattah from its program on the grounds of “cultural sensitivity” after a terror attack at Bondi Beach.

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It prompted a backlash that culminated in the resignation of the board and the whole event being cancelled.

Objections to her inclusion had centred around a 2024 social media post that said: “If you are a Zionist, you have no claim or right to cultural safety”.

Abdel-Fattah also faced backlash for posting “May 2025 be the end of Israel” and changing her profile picture to a picture of a Palestinian paratrooper after the 7 October attacks.

Abdel-Fattah told the ABC in an interview she had used the image when she had “no idea about the death toll”.

The Sydney writers’ festival board invited her to take part prior to the Bondi attack and the Adelaide writers’ week controversy. This week it stuck by the invitation, with chief executive Brooke Webb saying the event was “not in the business of cancelling or censoring writers”.

Alex Ryvchin, the co-chief executive of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, told ABC News he interpreted Abdel-Fattah’s inclusion in the program as a “deliberate provocation and a middle finger to the Jewish community”.

Last week the NSW premier, Chris Minns, expressed reservations about Abdel-Fattah’s participation in the Newcastle writers festival, describing her inclusion as a “head-scratcher” and “crazy”.

On Wednesday, the NSW arts minister, John Graham, emphasised the need to “lower the temperature” of debate but said cancelling events did not achieve this.

“Everyone can play a part in that, including our cultural institutions and events,” he said. “We have seen that cancelling programs, rather than contributing to social harmony, can often have the opposite effect.

“We have been working closely with Jewish leaders and our cultural sector, including writers festivals, to find ways to make Jewish arts and culture lovers feel welcome at our events and institutions. My expectation is arts organisations make this a priority.”

Guardian Australia is also a partner of the event.

Move over bird of the year: voting is now open in the Guardian’s poll to find Australia’s best children’s picture book of all time.

In December, more than 3,000 Guardian readers shared their favourite Australian picture books, which shaped the top 50 shortlist.

Spanning picture books published between 1973 and 2022, among the 50 books are familiar classics – Possum Magic, Who Sank the Boat?, Animalia, Mr McGee, The Rainbow Serpent, the mysterious and prolific Grug – as well as more recent hits like The Very Cranky Bear, Pig the Pug and Mr Chicken Goes to Paris.

Starting on Tuesday, much like bird of the year, readers can vote once a day for their favourite picture book. The five books with the least votes will be eliminated each day, with tallies resetting at 9.30am AEDT. Readers should remember to vote every day in order to keep their favourite book in the running.

The final round of voting for the remaining 10 books will start at 9.30am AEDT on Wednesday 4 February, after which vote tallies will no longer be visible. The book with the most votes when the poll closes at 9.30am on Thursday 5 February will be crowned champion – and revealed at 6am on Friday 6 February.

Get voting!

The Australian classifications review board has been ordered to review its assessment of the book Gender Queer, after the federal court found the board had ignored, overlooked or misunderstood public submissions for it to be censored.

Last year, the Classification Review Board rejected calls to restrict access to a memoir about gender identity that was the target of conservative campaigns to have it banned in the US, and found the content was appropriate for its intended audience.

Rightwing activist Bernard Gaynor had applied to the board early last year to review the classification of the graphic novel-style memoir about gender identity by writer Maia Kobabe.

Complaints about the book – which details Kobabe’s experience coming out as non-binary – are focused on the cartoon images of sex scenes, one of which has been described by critics seeking a ban as “pornographic” and “paedophilic”.

After a review of the classification last year, including seeking comment from the public, the board kept the original classification as unrestricted, with the consumer advice of “M – not recommended for readers under 15 years”. Gaynor appealed against the ruling to the federal court.

Gaynor’s barrister, Bret Walker SC, argued there was a “broadbrush dismissal” of submissions the board claimed were anti-LGBTQ+. Walker said many of them objected to what they saw as depicting a man having sex with a minor – referring to an image portraying Plato’s Symposium.

Walker said many of those objections did not refer to the gender of the image’s subjects, just that it appeared to depict paedophilia.

In his ruling quashing the board’s decision on Monday, Justice Ian Jackman agreed with Walker’s argument.

“The fundamental flaw in that submission is that, as I have said above, the Review Board’s description of the public submissions overwhelmingly being ‘broadly anti-LGBTQIA+’ demonstrates that the review board ignored, overlooked or misunderstood those submissions,” he said.

“In light of that finding, the review board’s view that the submissions contained little or no evidence that the writers had read the publication, understood the content within the context of the publication, or failed to demonstrate engagement with the publication also proceed from, and are infected by, the review board having ignored, overlooked or misunderstood the submissions.”

Jackman said only 66 of the 576 submissions opposing the classification “can be rationally treated” as anti-LGBTQ, and that was not an overwhelming number as the board had said.

“Only about 11.5% of the public submissions by number, and less than 1% of the individuals who made submissions, can thus be described as ‘broadly anti-LGBTQIA+’ … The majority of the review board whose reasons were published in the decision cannot have read and understood the public submissions in expressing the view that they did.”

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Jackman ordered the previous classifications decision to be quashed, for the review board to reclassify the book, and for the government to pay Gaynor’s costs.

In the US, Gender Queer is one of the most challenged books in libraries. Kobabe told the ABC in May that the US push to ban the book had been frustrating and that the depiction of Plato’s Symposium had been included as it was the only gay-themed texts Kobabe had encountered in college.

Kobabe had said that the book would likely have been challenged even without the images that were the focus of this case.

“I think that the challenges are coming from a place of people just trying to limit queer, trans and non-binary voices in the public sphere,” Kobabe said.

“And I think the fact that my book has the title Gender Queer, I think the fact that it’s a comic, I think the fact that it’s won several major literary awards in the United States, and also that it is a happy story.

“It is a story of acceptance. It is a story of coming out. And in the story, I face no negative consequences to coming out.”