ABC biased on roo cull

In its self-promotional advertising, the ABC makes itself out to be the news outlet that Australians can “trust”. Personally, I had never questioned this until I started paying attention to how the media in Canberra covers the Greens/Labor government’s horrific cull of Eastern Grey Kangaroos. 

The cull has been undertaken every year for 15 years, and has seen over 39,000 healthy kangaroos and joeys killed in circumstances that most Canberrans would view as animal cruelty. 

During the 2023 cull, the Canberra Times, Canberra Daily, and City News published many letters to the editor opposing the cull, and also featured articles that raised concerns about the cruel treatment of Canberra’s kangaroos. 

Aside from a short piece on ABC Canberra that presented a one-sided (i.e., Government’s view) on the cull, the ABC was completely silent.

How can the ABC claim to be the news Australians trust when they refuse to provide balanced and unbiased coverage on such a controversial topic?

• Mike Chavez, Palmerston

Current system isn’t working

Some critics of the Voice claim that it undermines equality. To me this seems mistaken. 

First, it suggests that Indigenous Australians have enjoyed the benefits of equality since the arrival of the First Fleet. They haven’t. They’ve been the victims of systemic inequality resulting in dispossession, violence, neglect, and repression over many decades. It’s a bit rich to now turn around and say we can’t give you a means to rectify the disadvantage we caused because that would be unequal. 

Second, what we really need is equality of outcome. We need to ensure that Indigenous Australians are equal to non-Indigenous Australians in terms of their life expectancy, education, employment and incarceration rates. The way to do that is to give them a way to open a dialogue with the executive government through the Voice, so that policy implementation achieves better results. The current system isn’t working. 

Third, those who raise ‘equality’ as an issue would be much more convincing if they addressed other inequalities. For example, they could express their outrage at the inequality that voters in the ACT and the NT don’t have their votes counted in the ‘vote of states’.  Both are likely to be strong ‘Yes’ supporters, so you won’t hear a whisper from the ‘No’ campaign about this inequality. That tells you that many in the ‘No’ campaign are not really interested in equality. They’re just cynically using it to scare people into voting ‘No’. 

Give indigenous Australians a fair go. Vote ‘Yes’ in the referendum.  

• Bob Hall, Chapman 

Legislation not referendum

Some voters are asking for a good reason to vote no in the referendum. How about scrapping the referendum for starters and legislating instead saving taxpayers millions, as a legislated Voice will operate in a similar fashion, both being controlled by the Parliament. As polling is showing that the Voice now has little to no chance of succeeding, the Uluru Statement by insisting that it must be enshrined in the Constitution has shot itself in the foot, effectively denying the Voice from having a “trial run” should it have been legislated instead.

• – Mario Stivala, Belconnen

Uluru Statement from the Heart

Vi McGregor (CW 14 September) is quite free to come to the conclusion that only remote Indigenous people need more help from the general community and the government, as that is one of many interpretations of the available facts. She is not free, however, to repeat the falsehood that the Uluṟu Statement is 26 pages long. It is one page long. I would appreciate it if your magazine would print the following statement from the responsible and thorough organisation RMIT FactLab, so that none of your readers are misled:

“False. The Uluru Statement is a one-page document comprising just 440 words, as confirmed by the statement’s authors. Papers released under FOI contain the statement, but also include 25 pages of background information, including minutes of meetings held with Indigenous communities in 2016 and 2017, which are not part of the Uluru Statement from the Heart. The claim that the FOI documents reveal that the Uluru Statement of the Heart is 26 pages long and contains policies such as reparations for First Nations peoples is false.”

• Mary Coombe, Queanbeyan

Allow others to speak and be heard

For almost 200 years, White Australians had the only voice in Australia, they were the only people allowed to speak and the only voice that was heard.  They silenced every other voice.
It’s now time for white Australians to learn that they can and should share that voice they have held for so long and allow others to speak and be listened to.  We can learn to share and we can make Australia a better place if we do learn to share and be fair to all Australians.

• – Doug Steley, Heyfield VIC

Albanese needs to keep promises

Mary Coombe (CW 14 September) thinks the ‘No’ case is encouraging ignorance and says that the typical response to not knowing something is to go and find out. Is that why when Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was asked on radio if he had read the additional 25 pages to the A4 Uluru Statement, he replied he hadn’t. When elected as PM, Albanese said “On behalf of the ALP, I commit to the Uluru Statement from the Heart in full”. It talks about the Makarrata statement, which is treaty. Yet Albanese keeps telling us the Voice doesn’t involve a treaty, whilst also seen recently wearing a treaty shirt at a rock concert. 

The ‘Yes’ campaign has turned to the blame game and is trying to paint opposition leader Peter Dutton as some kind of villain. Albanese’s choice of activists like Marcia Langton and Thomas Mayo to promote the ‘Yes’ vote has backfired miserably as previous footage has shown them to be calling Australia a racist, horrible country, to punish politicians, abolish colonial institutions and seeking reparations for land, whilst the ‘No’ campaigners such as Jacinta Price and Warren Mundine have been calm, measured and articulate. 

Maybe if Albanese had kept his election promises such as cheaper electricity bills, fixing the cost of living, a clear and transparent parliament, as well as spending more than just a couple of hours in Alice Springs before jetting off to the tennis (Dutton and Price spent two days in Alice listening to locals), people would have more reason to believe him.

• Ian Pilsner, Weston

We are not all equal

In response to Vi Evans (CW 14 September), sadly, many of today’s negative attitudes are the detritus of yesteryear’s misconceptions. Worse, many, including some Indigenous high-profilers, continue to deny the facts. For starters, we are not all equal or blessed with equity. Our Constitution was founded on racism; a conviction that Australia should be exclusively white. Aborigines originally weren’t considered at all because it was seriously believed they would soon die out. The policies and sometimes barbarous actions of the past and present fully justify immediate Constitutional acknowledgement including the Voice.

So, why are we quibbling? The government of the day will decide which advisory body recommendations it accepts, rejects or amends. The only Voice difference is that Constitutional enshrinement will ensure governments will have an obligation to explain their reasons to both the parliament and the people. And it will be the parliament (including the opposition) that decides the structure and operational responsibilities of the advisory body. Furthermore, the most eminent legal advice is that the proposed Amendment will enable little or no legal challenge to any decision. There’ll be no floods of litigation – just as there were none with Mabo. Further, a Constitutional change need not be “permanent”.

There’s also the canard the Voice is just a wasteful duplication of existing bodies; rather, the Voice has the potential to add significantly to their effectiveness. 

Finally, is Vi serious when she points to the success of the few as evidence of no need for a new direction to help the many who still struggle under greater disadvantage than most white Australians – and they’re not only in remote areas? 

• Eric Hunter, Cook

Notions of Beauty

Thank you, Amy Blain, for your idea of beauty (CW 14 September) following my “shameful” observations about sad old Northbourne Avenue (24 August). Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Governments love people who do not lift the bar because it lets them continue unchallenged and not have to worry much about continual improvement. We sadly end up with a city reflecting lower values when this occurs. I’m strongly opposed that concept!

• John Lawrence, Flynn

Northbourne Avenue ‘defaced’

I beg to differ with Amy Blain’s response (CW 14 September) to letters from John Lawrence (24 August) and Daphne Harding (31 August). Northbourne Avenue has not been enhanced by light rail stage 1 from Gungahlin to Canberra City: it has been defaced.

The native grasses planted along the route look like dry ‘feral’ grass just waiting for a careless spark or an arsonist. Weeds abound, some taller than the grass. Litter is accumulating, especially near Gungahlin centre and near the City centre.

Northbourne Avenue is no longer a grand avenue leading into the nation’s capital city. Stage 2B to Woden threatens to destroy the leafy character of Commonwealth Avenue, Adelaide Avenue and Yarra Glen. To make matters worse, it would fail a cost-benefit analysis dismally.

• Douglas Mackenzie, Deakin

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