Politics, perception and people power

I grew up in suburban Melbourne in the 80s and 90s in a working-class family. My dad had served twenty years in the Navy and entered the Ambulance service when I was young. He was an enthusiastic union member and Labor supporter. I completed high school in 1998 and turned 18 the following January. Despite growing up in a household with a parent who understood politics, when it came time to vote I had absolutely no idea how it worked, nor did I care to know. To be honest, I didn’t care to know until I had to care when I was in my mid 30s and found myself in a role in my work where I engaged with Government representatives.

Around the same time, I had also embarked on a law degree. Despite already having an undergraduate degree, working in sectors predominately funded by Government and having some awareness of politics, I failed my Constitutional Law subject, mainly due to my absolute lack of interest in it.

As my professional career moved more towards Government Relations, I started to understand politics a little more. My insight into the political world was fast tracked out of necessity and through two mentors that helped me along the way. As I started connecting with State and Federal Ministers and Members of Parliament, I started to develop a deeper understanding of the role these individuals play in forming our way of life. Our laws, policies, where funding is directed and how the Australian political system works.

My learning was accelerated by an old client I had worked with who had found her voice in Youth Parliament. She patiently educated me on the intricate details of law making, processes and the nuts and bolts of politics.

Along the learning journey, I met some wonderful people. Members of Parliament, Advisors, political staffers, and Ministers. Overall, they were good people trying to do good things for their community, however I also started to see the significant failings in the way things worked.

As I was beginning to understand more about our systems that govern how we live, I continued to walk alongside those in front line service delivery, our clients, and our community. It became glaringly obvious that there was a chasm between decision making in politics and the community it was meant to serve.

What also became glaringly obvious was the lack of knowledge our community had about politics and how decisions are made. Which made me realise that we couldn’t hold our decision makers to account and influence law making if the overwhelming proportion of our community doesn’t know how it works, or care to know how it works.

For those not politically educated, all they see is the front page of mass media (often dictated by money) or social media. At election time at any level- local, State or Federal- they experience campaigns, tactics and promises that will gain votes, often short-term wins without visions longer term sustainable change.

As I started to consider this disconnect, I was losing faith in our system. The more I understood it, the more I realised it was driven by power, ego, and money.

I would often chat to the political staffers and Advisors, interested in how they wound up in politics. A majority came from a highly political family and studies politics at university. They were intelligent and passionate however also seemed to think the majority of the community  were also passionate about politics. A clear disconnect from the reality.

I recently listened to an old podcast episode that was made just after Labor won the last Federal election. I listened to the three presenters dissecting the election results that saw a number of Independents elected. They were discussing strategy, the voters’ motivations, and the impact. Towards the end of the episode, one of the commentators remarked, “maybe not only our politicians are out of touch with the voters, maybe we are as well.”

This has been my experience. Those working in politics or involved in it in some capacity seemed to have very little insight into the regular voter. One exception, who I am lucky to call my friend, is our Legalise Cannabis Southern Metro representative Rachel Payne, who very much has her finger on the pulse of the community. When she was recruiting for staff, she focused on lived experience, people from our community who are impacted by the very decisions she is voting on or proposing in Parliament.

This blog is not a ploy to get people supporting Rachel however it was a refreshing anomaly in my experience of the world of politics. I am sure there are others however Rachel was passionate about sensible policy that created meaningful change in the community, and she was also aware of her need to have to compromise at times to progress the issues important  to her and her party. She is transparent, up front, intelligent and seeks out evidence from an array of areas to inform her decision making. Unfortunately, I hear her party met with a lack of understanding and some ridicule by others who are challenged by her progressive nature.

Despite my newfound awareness of all things politics, I was still bewildered when decisions  made in Parliament about issues that were highly impactful for the community  were clearly not informed by evidence. The Government hold every funded organisation to account to provide “evidence-based interventions” yet they themselves were making decisions opposed to the evidence. Again politics, power, ego, and money.

An example of this was the response to the number of overdoses at a festival earlier this year. The evidence for pill testing is overwhelming. It saves lives. Yet the Government response was to increase sniffer dogs and police presence, a move that increases risk and has no evidence supporting reducing drug taking behaviour.

This is just one example of countless responses, legislative amendments and decisions made that went against evidence and appear to fall victim to the internal work of politics and pressure.

Youth Justice is the current casualty of the storm that drives decisions. 20 years ago, Youth Justice sat with Department of Human Services. The primary role was rehabilitation. The interventions were holistic, rehabilitation focused and worked quite well in breaking some very entrenched cycles. Unfortunately, the tough on crime movement led to Youth Justice being moved to Department of Justice. I have many close friends who have worked in this system for over two decades and they are exacerbated by the current state. It is no longer therapeutic and the most recent push for ankle monitoring moves away from the decades of evidence of what works for young offenders. Instead of investing in prevention and early intervention programs that are shown to work, we see funding ceased or reduced for these programs and prisons built. This is far from evidence based.

I could speak forever about the decisions made across all sectors that baffle me and create greater harm in the community. Even legislation that is a reaction to community safety has long term implications for our community that fail to be considered because it is reactive, not responsive, or well considered.

Sitting as an outsider and surveying the current state of politics and our systems can be overwhelming. I have also personally experienced failures of systems, for myself and my children, and for my friends. These experiences have been soul-destroying.

When I stepped away from my work in the health and community sector, I planned to return to working with individuals and their families, where I could support change on the smaller scale. However after one experience, I realised that once you are aware of “systems and politics” it is very difficult to sit with the frustrations of the failures, particularly when you are supporting vulnerable people who feel the impact of these failures so strongly.  

After a brief meeting with a wonderful human who kindly gave his time and insights early into my new journey, it was the realisation that there was a need to mobilise community to better understand politics and hold decision makers to account. With my curious nature I sought to explore whether there were organisations or spaces, bipartisan, who were doing this work. Connecting with the “commonfolk” to educate and mobilise them to advocate for what they believe is important. I am sure this is done in some capacity, however generally it is only when people seek this out. For the majority, they don’t know what they don’t know until they know it.

I think of the recent emphasis put on embedding lived/living experience across systems. Those that know me, know I am passionate about this and have strived to enable people to have a seat at the table, whether that is for their own individual care or for systemic change,. What is clear however, is that there is not the diversity of voice that is needed to have nuanced discussions around the important things impacting our world.

The key lies in informing our community and providing the information in a way that they can engage with and in a manner that is not politically motivated.

Increasing access to nuanced information, embedding learning throughout schools and in community. Having more people that operate to inform and not influence voting. Educating people how they can have their voices heard about things important to them and showing people how they can be part of making the change.

The state of politics in Australia is quite absurd. Candidates are running on popularity votes and slandering the opposition. Anyone who has watched or listened to debate time in Parliament would think they were watching behaviours of adolescents who are going tit for tat about a school yard disagreement.

I started writing a blog about anarchists, activists, agitators, and advocates. About how we need all these roles to drive social change however what we need is community that is informed, and then enabled to participate in the change.

A friend once noted that I don’t just highlight the issue, but I provide a way forward and for me a way forward starts with simply building awareness.

I did try and locate some easy to read resources to link however there doesn’t seem much out there…highlighting the very issue! It is about starting with the basics. Understanding how politics works, how the perceptions of those in politics are created and driven in media and then showing people how they can be engaged to change the narrative.

To get people to start considering all things politics in their world I am going to finish on a few facts that may not be widely known about how things work in Australia.

Thanks to the Grattan Institute Here’s who funded the 2022 election - Grattan Institute

Australia’s political parties collectively spent a whopping $418 million in the year leading up to the federal election in 2022.

Clive Palmer broke records again, with his mining company Mineralogy donating $117 million to his United Australia Party.

Anthony Pratt’s paper and packaging company Pratt Holdings was the next largest donor in 2022, at $3.7 million, with the funds evenly split between the Coalition and Labor.

Let’s consider why who funds elections are important.

The more funding a campaign has, the more media and PR they can afford. The more influence they have.

This is ok if the messages are not influenced by who funds the campaign.

Unions are the biggest funders in Labor’s campaigns therefore it would be right to assume that Labor’s policies are going to be supportive of what the unions stand for. On the flip side it is wealthy investors funding the Coalition. There is also a lot of private money that is undisclosed.

We know that when people pay for a service, they expect something in return. This concept doesn’t change when it comes to politics.

How can we as the community have candidates truly running for their community’s best interest when political parties are funded by people with their own interests?

Secondly, I want to touch on how the media influences politics in Australia. We just need to look at what is happening in America now. The images of Joe Biden being portrayed as old and senile have driven a lack of confidence in the voters. All Trump needs to do is simply be quiet and the media have done his job.

Media and democracy – Australian Politics and Policy (caul.edu.au) have a great article into the influence of media and politics and within this article they highlight “Media is increasingly blamed for the toxic nature of contemporary political culture in Canberra and for undermining trust in democracy.”

This brings me to the very important definition of democracy in Australia. I searched for a very simple definition of democracy when I was trying to get my head around this and I couldn’t pinpoint something simple enough, so I asked trusty Chat GPT…. and here is what my AI friend told me.

“Democracy in Australian politics means that the people have the power to choose their leaders and make decisions about how the country is run through free and fair elections. It ensures everyone has a say in the government, typically through voting for representatives in Parliament.”

If we are increasingly disengaged with politics, if political campaigns are run by a lack of transparency in who is funding it and how is influencing media reporting, how are voters empowered to make informed decisions that will elect people who are representing them?

So, it comes back to enabling and informing people about the system, how it works and how they can participate to change it.

Looking at voter statistics we can see the tide is changing across generations of voters. Our younger generations are quite attuned to politics and appear to be disenchanted by our two major parties.

The link shows voting trends in the 2019 Federal election. Silent Generation 1928-1945; Baby Boomers 1946-1964; Gen X 1965-1980 and Millennials 1981-1996. Voting patterns by generation – Parliament of Australia (aph.gov.au)

An article in The Conversation shows Australia’s young people are moving to the left – though young women are more progressive than men, reflecting a global trend (theconversation.com)

Interestingly our next wave of voters are Gen Z-, born 1997-2012. An article I recently read summarised the shift in young Millennials and Gen Zers. These generations “believe in the importance of elections and in their own power: they report, at similar rates, that they think voting is a way to have a say about the country’s future, and that young people have the ability to effect change. Gen Zers are especially aware that their vote is a tool for impact: after “it’s my responsibility,”

I have been informed by an abundance of young women passionate about politics. These young women were, for the most part, Gen Zers.

Despite the rise in our younger generations being more engaged in politics, there continues to be one main factor influencing political engagement- tertiary education. Education beyond high school. I can’t seem to locate research on why this is an influencing factor however I will assume that it is around access to information.

17,807, 779 Australian’s are enrolled to vote- 98.2% of the population.

According to the ABS 11,511,655 of Australian’s have a tertiary education. 65% of voters.

These statistics leave me asking how we can improve access to those not tertiary educated. By no means am I saying that everyone who is tertiary educated is engaged or informed about politics, however it does seem to be a slightly uneven playing field.

Having worked with our vulnerable and marginalised community for two decades, many of whom didn’t complete high school, I can tell you that they do not have access to nuanced information about politics however many decisions that are made by those in power impact them greatly. Our health and social service system, policing, education, justice…all of the decisions that impact our community greatly are being made by people who do not represent the diversity of our community and for the most part, have not walked alongside those who have not had a voice in their lives or the community they live in.

I am keen to test my assumptions. I would love to do some research with our disadvantaged communities about their level of political engagement. I would also love to test my hypothesis that considers if we empower more individuals to understand politics, then our system will change. Until then I will continue to raise awareness by enabling more people to understand the system, use their voice and experiences, and hold decision makers accountable to act in the best interests of all of the community that they serve…not just those who can fund their campaigns or drive their own political agendas.