N 2008, FERVENT PUBLIC DEBATE FOLLOWED THE ANNOUNCEMENT THAT THE NEW national Australian Curriculum, then in early development, would mandate the study of Australian literature for all students 'across the compulsory years of schooling' (Davies, Martin and Buzacott 21). Conservative commentators welcomed what they saw as assurance that 'young Australians' would learn 'to appreciate, value and celebrate this nation's identity and history' (Donnelly, 'A Canon'). More progressive voices argued that rather than the texts to be read, focus should be on practices of reading that respond to 'students' needs, interests and experiences as national and global citizens' (Davies 47-8). Conservatives were less enthused by the final language of the new curriculum: in Quadrant, selfproclaimed 'culture warrior' Kevin Donnelly complained that it had replaced the Western canon and Judeo-Christian morals with 'politically correct perspectives', likely the three cross-curriculum priorities: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures, Asia and Australia's engagement with Asia, and sustainability (Donnelly, 'The Ideology of the National English Curriculum 28, 27; ACARA, 'Cross-curriculum Priorities'). Australian Curriculum: English is separated into three strands, 'language', 'literature' and 'literacy', each with an enormous set of extensively detailed descriptors, outcomes and performance indicators

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This article reads Thea Astley’s final novel in the context of rhetoric about the death of Australian literature that has been a mainstay of our national culture almost since its inception. In the early 2000s, a new round of obituarists argued that the global publishing industry, critical trends and changing educational pedagogies were eroding Australia’s literary identity. Drylands, published in 1999, can be considered a slightly prescient participant in this conversation: it is subtitled A Book for the World’s Last Reader, seemingly framing the novel in a polemics of decline. My reading, however, sees the book as the product of two correlated yet combative literary projects: the attempt by its primary narrator, Janet Deakin, to write a book after what she sees as the likely death of reading and writing; and Astley’s more nuanced exploration of the role of literature in settler colonial modernity. Reading across the seven narratives that constitute the book, I argue that Drylands performs the fraught relationship between ethics and aesthetics in the context of writing about the systemic violence of the settler colonial state, questioning literary privilege, exclusivity and complicity in ways that remain relevant to debates regarding Australian literature today.