Speaking Up For The Voiceless

Ondine Sherman & Sarah Ferguson

When the ABC TV's  Four Corners program screened A Bloody Business in March this year the political and public backlash was deafening. The images of the cruel treatment Australian cattle received in Indonesian abattoirs generated overwhelming public outcry and the temporary suspension of the trade with Indonesia.

The reaction was just what the organisation Voiceless, the animal protection institute would expect as they attempt to get the message across of how unethically animals are treated by humans. But Voiceless don't preach, they just present the evidence and allow you to decide.

Sadly the evidence overwhelmingly proves that we humans are unnecessarily cruel to other life forms that we share the planet with. And it doesn't have to be that way.

Gemma Davis & Jessica Gomez

Voiceless is the brainchild of the well known Sydney family of Shermans and in particularly Ondine Sherman who discovered at an early age, that the meat she was eating came from an animal,. She turned Vegan and gradually the entire family, dad Brian, mother Jean and brother Emile Sherman followed suit. (Everyone knows Emile Sherman now-ever since he stepped up to the stage at the 2011 Academy Awards to accept an Oscar for his production of The King's Speech.)

Caroline & Emile Sherman

In their third year, the  Voiceless Awards are handed out to those who  have advanced the cause to end animal suffering, overseen by a judging panel chaired by Nobel Prize Laureate J M Coetze.

This year at the Blue Hotel in Woolloomooloo the reporter on A Bloody Business Sarah Ferguson and producer Michael Doyle won $5,000 in the broadcast category of the Voiceless Media Prize. Other winners: Christine Jackman for her article, The claws come out  in the Weekend Australian Magazine, broadcaster Caro Meldrum-Hanna for “Bad Egg” which aired on 7.30 NSW about the Australian Egg Corporation on its proposal to allow 20,000 hens per hectare and Cheryl Balfour for a series of articles about the Eden Park kangaroo cull published in the Whittlesea Leader between December 2010 and October 2011.
A Bloody Business can be viewed here (VIEWER WARNING: Contains images which
may distress some viewers)
 The Voiceless website is here and contains a lot of evidence and information on cruelty to animals. 

'Extremists' We Like

Brian Sherman & daughter Ondine with a friendly Kangaroo
courtesy Voiceless

The billionaire Brian Sherman last week hit back at the Shooters & Fisher's Party MP Robert Borsack who claimed in the NSW Parliament on May 11th that Sherman's Voiceless was an "extremist animal rights group".

On it's website Voiceless says: “Voiceless will bring the institutionalised suffering of animals to the forefront of Australia’s agenda; ensuring that animal protection is the next great social justice movement.” 

 Borsack says that Voiceless was one of many 'extremist' groups attempting to buy credibility at Universities and other teaching bodies. Sherman is a well known philanthropist who donates millions of dollars with no strings attached to education bodies throughout Australia.

He is also a dedicated animal right's activist and a vegan who wears or uses no animal products that have been produced through animal suffering.

The Shooters and Fishers Party with just 2 state MPs also thinks The Greens are an extremist party despite The Greens now holding the balance of power federally with 9 senators, 5 NSW upper house MPs and one in the lower house.

MP Robert Borsack & the elephant he shot in 2008
 www.wildhunts.co.nz

Borsack who proudly tells anyone who will listen of how he slaughtered an elephant while on safari in Zimbabwe in 2008 basically wants everyone to be free to blast away at any living creature while rampaging through state forests in 4 wheel drives.

Brian Sherman started Voiceless with his daughter Ondine in 2004 to raise awareness of the suffering of animals.

It's fair to say the writer AA Gill who is in town at present wouldn't have received an invite to the fundraiser  Sherman hosted last week-Voices of Art 2: An Evening Of Art For Animals. AA Gill infamously shot a baboon last year because he wanted to see how it felt to kill.

And who were amongst the extremists at the Voiceless fundraiser ?. Noted Japanese designer Akira Isogawa, prominent artist Adam Chang, one of the world's most respected neurosurgeons, the brilliant Dr  Charlie Teo (Isogawa and Teo are Voiceless board members) Brian's son Emile Sherman who just picked up an Oscar at the Academy Awards in  Hollywood for his production- The King's Voice  ( he thanked his mother & father from the stage) Emile's mum Gene who runs the superb Sherman Gallery in Paddington and Lord Mayor Clover Moore and Edmund Capon, director of the NSW Art Gallery.

Don't miss tonight's Australian Story Hearts Of Gold: 23rd May 2011, 8pm which features the prodigiously talented Sherman family and their great passion for animals.
You can catch the show later on the ABC's Iview.