Youth Live4Life Statement on the Voice to Parliament

IMAGE DESCRIPTION - The Yes campaign brand has been created in collaboration with Birra Gubbi artist Lara Watson incorporated. This campaign brand motif is copyright artwork.

As National Reconciliation Week 2023 asks all Australians to 'Be A Voice For Generations', Youth Live4Life has taken the opportunity to reflect on our vision that all rural communities across Australia are empowered to support, improve, and invest in young people’s mental health and reduce suicide.

For too long, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have been over-represented with mental health issues, such as depression, anxiety, substance abuse, suicide and struggles with suicidal thinking. A Voice to Parliament will help inform policy and legal decisions that impact the lives of Indigenous communities. It offers an unprecedented opportunity for those communities to be seen and heard. It offers a sense of hope, healing and wellbeing.

Being seen and heard is very much at the heart of our values. Evidence tells us that being seen and heard leads to better mental health outcomes.

The four core values of Youth Live4Life — inclusion, integrity, collaboration, and respect — are supported by guiding principles of community and youth participation, local strength, evidence-based education, and reflection. They inform our external activities, internal operations, and policies. Every day, we endeavour to fulfil our values in the work we do with rural and regional communities.

In 2021, our whole Youth Live4Life organisation, including the Board, undertook Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cross-cultural training. Following that training, we affirmed our formal acceptance of the generous invitation contained in the Uluru Statement from the Heart — including the key element of a  constitutionally-enshrined First Nations Voice to Parliament. 

Released in 2017, the Uluru Statement from the Heart is the largest consensus of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples in Australian history on a proposal for substantive recognition. It calls for Voice, Treaty and Truth. The Voice is the first step. 

A referendum to enshrine a Voice for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples in the Constitution will be put to the Australian people in 2023. 

Youth Live4Life is proud to walk together with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in a movement which invites every Australian to honour the work of generations past, strive for the benefit of generations future, and imagine a more just, equitable and reconciled country for all.

We declare our support for the YES case in the referendum. 

Bernard Galbally

Chief Executive Officer, Youth Live4Life