When I hear an Australian politician announce a tough new immigration policy, I think dystopia

‘What is the Australian narrative? Probably it’s about mateship and a fair go or something along these lines. But what is the narrative for migrants to Australia?’ Illustration: Victoria Hart/Guardian Design

When I was writing my second novel, Australiana, I deliberated over the title for a long time.

I had many stories that were set in a regional community, and I had an essay and then a whole series of poems. The essay I ended up publishing separately as The Conquest of Land and Dream, and the poems are a largely unpublished sequence called Dispossession.