Andrew Broffman on Equity

“There is a quietude on desert Country that permits stillness. It is a place where the busyness of life folds into the marks of geological history and creation. Here, human endeavour would seem to follow the cycles of time that govern the movement of the night sky, or the dry salt lakes that whisper of rains that have come and gone.

Yet we do much to shape this Country. We desperately cut the earth and scrape the soil. We choke the sky with a fine dust. We push water further from our reach. And the wealth that attaches to this extractive business is extraordinary.

At the same time, on the same Country, children sleep in broken houses while their parents squeeze the last few dollars of credit to keep the ceiling fans whirring against the summer heat.

On desert Country equity would describe a balance: an expansive horizon where we are not the shapers but the shaped.”