The Fact of the Matter

The Fact of the Matter is a poem by prolific Australian writer and poet Edward Dyson. It was first published in The Bulletin magazine on 30 July 1892 in reply to fellow poets Henry Lawson and Banjo Paterson. This poem formed part of the Bulletin Debate, a series of poems by Lawson, Paterson, and others, about the true nature of life in the Australian bush.

In Up The Country, Lawson had criticised "City Bushmen" such as Banjo Paterson who tended to romanticize bush life. Paterson, in turn, accused Lawson of representing bush life as nothing but doom and gloom. Dyson, who grew up in Ballarat, Victoria, working from an early age in the mines and on the land before moving to Melbourne, sided with Lawson, expressing the view that those who glorified country life should go and live there.