You're The Voice

Words James Hutton, Publisher

Welcome to the August 2023 edition of The Beast, the monthly magazine for Sydney’s windy beaches of the east. I’m not a huge fan of the cold weather, but we really can’t complain about the beautiful blue skies and sunny days we’ve been gifted this year, especially compared to last year’s miserable, mouldy winter.

Coogee artist Alan Jones (not the radio personality) is the talent behind this month’s moody cover painting of Dunningham Reserve, Coogee. Alan has been working on a series of smallscale landscape paintings of the area around Coopers Shoot in the Northern Rivers for his latest exhibition, Paintings from Coopers Shoot, which will be running from August 2-26 at Olsen Gallery, Woollahra. You can also see more of Alan’s work at the Olsen Gallery’s website, www.olsengallery.com.

The debate surrounding the proposed Indigenous Voice to Parliament is well underway. The Voice will give Indigenous communities a route to help inform policy and legal decisions that impact their lives, leading to more effective results.

I struggle to understand why anyone would be opposed to the constitutional right of Aboriginal people to have a say in policies that affect them. Embedding it in the constitution will recognise their special place in Australia’s history and prevent it from being shut down by successive governments.

People ask, “Why should Aboriginal people be treated differently?” Well, life expectancy for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people is about 8 years shorter than for non-Indigenous people; their median gross weekly equivalised household income is over $300 less than that of non-Indigenous adults; an estimated 40 per cent of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adults have minimal English literacy

(a figure that rises to as high as 70 per cent in many remote areas) and, although Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adults make up around 2 per cent of the national population, they constitute 27 per cent of the national prison population.

All of this stems from the fact that colonisation has completely upended their lives. Their land was stolen, they were banned from speaking their languages (there were over 250 languages prior to colonisation), their culture was decimated and children were even stolen from their families. It takes more than just a few generations to undo this damage.

Giving the original custodians of this country a say in policies that affect them is a small but important step towards closing the gap. Please get behind this, and please don’t be fooled by the misinformation campaigns and fearmongering from politicians trying to sabotage this important reform for their own gain.

Cheers, James