Tim Winton talks Rinehart, rage, climate change and Cloudstreet

Tim Winton has been publishing books for more than 40 years, but there's one that stands out.

Cloudstreet — recently voted Australia's favourite book in an ABC poll — was a defining moment in Winton's career, but it's a book that almost never was.

In the late 1980s, Winton was in Europe with his wife and young son.

"We were in transit carrying all our earthly goods, and we were catching a bus to the airport in Rome, and we got off the bus," he said.

"We were just going into the terminal, and just before we got to the glass doors, this Italian guy started tugging on my sleeve … he's really quite insistent," Winton recalls.

"I stopped eventually, and he was pointing back at the bus and … there was one little grey sports bag in there, and I just couldn't believe it. It was all the manuscripts, all the type scripts, all the carbon copies, all the notes, my entire novel to that point about to head off into Rome unaccompanied.

"If it hadn't been for just the decency of that guy … I could have kissed him because, in a way, he saved our lives because that was the book that saved our lives."

Cloudstreet follows the fortunes of two families — the Lambs and the Pickles — over two decades in mid-20th-century Perth.

The book has been adapted for radio, theatre, opera and television, and in the 35 years since it was released, it has never been out of print.

"I can't really get my head around the life that the book has had," he said.

"I do have people coming up to me almost every day."

The opening passage from the book reads as follows:

"Will you look at us by the river! The whole restless mob of us on spread blankets in the dreamy briny sunshine skylarking and chiacking about for one day, one clear, clean, sweet day in a good world in the midst of our living." — Cloudstreet, 1992

Winton told 7.30 people told him the book reminded them of a gentler time, a kinder country.

"Probably the most consistent thing that people say to me seems to be about the kind of decency that they see in it, a kind of a yearning for solidarity and neighbourliness," Winton said.

Winton's latest book, Songs from the Firefront, is a collection of personal essays exploring how people find meaning, community and hope in an era marked by climate change, rage and social upheaval.

"The book is me reflecting on my own anguish and my own rage," he said.

He says the rise of big tech and the way algorithms seize on people's rage is feeding dangerous rhetoric, and those in charge need to be held accountable.

"People are profiting from our rage," Winton said.

"This is the thing that kills me. This is essentially a business model to make us angry, to make us scream at each other, to make us want to own each other, to destroy each other in public.

"I think the way our government at the moment is threatening to adopt a very supine attitude to those tech bros is a cause of deep concern … these bro-ligarchs or, as somebody very wisely has called it, the 'Nerd Reich'.

"I just think we need to be more assertive."

Big tech bosses are not the only ones who come in for criticism in his book.

He writes about his view of mining magnate Gina Rinehart in these words: "She does not value or understand: the natural world, tenderness, mercy, fellow feeling."

Given Mrs Rinehart has a lot of power, Winton is asked if writing about her makes him nervous?

"I think everybody's nervous and careful in speaking about that person for those reasons, because there's just so much form," he said.

Winton went on to say it was hard to explain to people outside of Western Australia the influence that Mrs Rinehart, and her father Lang Hancock, had had "on every element of society in politics, in the media, in communications. The amount of fear and awe that they generate".

In June One Nation leader Pauline Hanson told the ABC that she consulted Mrs Rinehart on policy and considered her a friend.

And it was revealed in July that Mrs Rinehart paid for Senator Hanson's flights from London to Sicily earlier this year and arranged for her to attend high-end fashion shows.

Winton said he was concerned about Mrs Rinehart's growing political influence.

7.30 approached Mrs Rinehart for a response through her company. A spokesperson for Hancock Prospecting disagreed with Winton's views and suggested the author was promoting socialism.

"Tim needs to better understand, the socialist style causes he espouses, which are the very opposite of caring. And the very opposite of tenderness and mercy," the spokesperson told 7.30 in a statement.

"And Tim needs to understand, what does enable better outcomes: investment, innovation, and the opportunities these bring, lifting the standards of living of those fortunate enough not to live in his uncaring, merciless socialist utopias.

The spokesperson also stated that Mrs Rinehart and her companies had paid "$25 billion" in taxes over the past decade, which they said helped "provide for nurses, hospitals, police, veterans, the elderly, emergency services, defence and so much more for her fellow Australians".

"Sadly, Mrs Rinehart and Tim are likely to always disagree on the governments most important responsibility, defending our country and its citizens."

Winton has been considering how the world should respond to rising temperatures for decades.

His 2024 novel, Juice, imagines a world where most of Australia is uninhabitable due to extreme weather.

"We had a generation to take swift and decisive climate action. We haven't done that.

"The best we can do now is to adapt and to mitigate the bits that we can. And sadly, we know that we're going to lose ecosystems, we're going to lose species, and a lot of people are going to live in more anguish and more straightened circumstances than needed to.

"And when you come from a prosperous country like ours, I don't think that's a tragedy. I think that's an outrage."

As to why he wrote a memoir, a strange deviation for someone who is known to be very private, Winton said it was the right time.

"It's just a way of trying to sift through that stuff and figure things out and give an account of myself to myself as much as for anybody else," he said.

"It's not really a proper memoir; it's just a sort of set of thoughts and reflections in the mode of memoir.

"You get to a sort of fulcrum point in your life where you realise there's more time behind you than years ahead of you, and that makes you reflect on where you've been … and what's most precious to you. And obviously that's the kids and their kids."

Watch 7.30, Mondays to Thursdays 7:30pm on ABC iview and ABC TV