A guide to the Indigenous voice to parliament published before last year’s ill-fated referendum has won book of the year at the Australian book industry awards.
The Voice to Parliament Handbook, co-written by Kaurareg activist and unionist Thomas Mayo and veteran journalist Kerry O’Brien, was hailed “a poignant reminder of a significant moment in Australian history” at the annual award ceremony in Melbourne on Thursday.
Also honoured was Melissa Kang and Yumi Stynes’ Welcome to Sex, a controversial sex education book that was removed from some retailers’ shelves last year after a self-described thinktank claimed “it was teaching sex to children”.
The Voice to Parliament Handbook, published by Hardie Grant in the months leading up to the October referendum, had been “crafted during a pivotal moment in Australia’s political and cultural landscape,” Abias organisers said in a statement, calling it “an extraordinary achievement, developed under intense time constraints”.
O’Brien told the Guardian last year that the handbook had been written to combat the “noise” and “confusion” being sown by opponents to the proposed First Nations federal advisory body.
In the same interview, Mayo predicted the majority of Australians would vote against the Voice only if the no campaign successfully confused enough people or made them fearful of change.
“I don’t believe there’ll be a sentiment among a majority of Australian people to reject recognising us or giving us a voice,” Mayo said at the time. “And so that’s why this book, with a whole lot of truth-telling and myth-busting, is important.”
Welcome to Sex, which was awarded book of the year for teenagers, was targeted last year by Women’s Forum Australia, which focuses on anti-trans campaigning. The conservative group had described the book as “a graphic sex guide for kids”.
Big W removed Welcome to Sex from its shelves and restricted its sales to online, saying staff members had been subject to abuse by customers objecting to the book’s display.
Also published by Hardie Grant, the publisher defended the book at the time, saying Welcome to Sex’s content came from 20 years of genuine questions to an advice column in teenage girls magazine Dolly. Kang was the column’s longest serving expert.
Trent Dalton won literary fiction book of the year for Lola in the Mirror, which received mixed reviews when it was released in October. Guardian reviewer Jack Callil panned the book for its “heavy trafficking in dewy-eyed earnestness” that trivialised homelessness.
Miles Franklin award winner Anna Funder won biography of the year for her book about George Orwell’s first wife Eileen O’Shaughnessy, Wifedom: Mrs Orwell’s Invisible Life.