I’m pretty proud of the bookshops we’ve created over the years. With the help of some very talented architects, we’ve created some beautiful spaces, and our buyers and booksellers have filled them with an interesting and diverse range of books. Each new shop excites me more, and I’m going through an intense affair with our new Hawthorn site. In an old bank building, it’s a series of rooms that reveal themselves as you wander through it. In the original banking chamber we discovered the remains of beautiful floor tiles, high ceilings and boarded up windows. We’ve turned an unused space between our new children’s shop and the old bank into a secret garden. Located at 687 Glenferrie Road, it’s well worth a look!

I’m usually not a fan of businesses advocating for political causes, believing that being a successful business doesn’t necessarily give you the moral or intellectual authority to try and influence public opinion. Indeed, as a bookseller, I believe we have an obligation to stock books from many different views and, on occasion, this has upset some of our staff and customers who find some of those views abhorrent or problematic. However, there have been occasions when we have taken a proactive position; climate change is an issue where we’ve supported and encouraged our staff and customers to take action, and as a company we are trying to minimise our environmental impact. Our most tangible efforts have been beginning the process of installing solar panels on our shops and office, although so far we’ve only managed one shop and are about to install a system on our office. We and our industry still have much to do.

The other issue that we will get behind is the referendum on the Voice to Parliament. For several years, I was on the board of the Indigenous Literacy Foundation. Since its inception, the ILF endeavoured to make sure that it had Indigenous Australians as board members and leaders. Now its CEO and co-chair are Indigenous, as are many of the key employees. A guiding principle of the ILF was that it would never try to tell communities what they needed, rather, it would listen to communities and be led by their needs. The very successful programs that the ILF runs (you can see them here) come from that principle. Listening to my fellow board members, and my experience from a few trips to Country, convinced me that the proposal for a Voice arising from the Uluru Statement from the Heart had considerable merit.

As Stan Grant articulates in his book, The Queen is Dead, Australia’s First Peoples have suffered terrible injustices at the hands of European colonisers, and we have a moral obligation to set things right. Empowering Indigenous communities across Australia and giving them direct access to government to affect policies that impact them seems eminently sensible. I can’t recommend more highly the little book published this month by Hardie Grant, The Voice to Parliament Handbook: All the Detail You Need. It clearly and succinctly gives you all the information you need to make a decision, and is perfect to give to friends and acquaintances who may be unsure.