Category: Event Report

Categories
Activism Event Report

Getting to the NEB of the issue: The National Emergency Briefing and what is to be done.

Last November eight experts made short presentations to hundreds of people gathered in Westminster Hall, London.

The topic? The climate and biodiversity emergencies that have been unfolding for decades now (the biodiversity crisis for centuries, tbf).

It was the National Emergency Briefing on climate & nature.

Well, now that has been turned into a documentary, with film showings in Europe and the rest of the world being encouraged. I went to a film showing last week in Adelaide.

In this short (ymmv) blog post I am going to talk about the film and what is missing from it, and what needs to be done now, (without holding out more than net zero hope that it will be).

What is good in the film

One is that it is short – 50 minutes is a nice round number.

All of the presentations are good (several are better than good). The presenters don’t waffle, they don’t batter people over the head with jargon.

What is cringe

NB I am not the target demographic, but the ‘Gogglebox’ side of things (cutting away to reaction shots, ‘chummy’ conversations on sofas with performative swearing was …. cringe. A mix of celebs (Deborah Meaden, Jennifer Saunders) and Joe and Jane Punter (mercifully not all white home counties). I understand why they did it, and maybe it is landing with other people. What the hell do I know.

What is ‘bad’/problematic in the film

I don’t know the order of the presentations, I suspect it more or less followed what appears in the film. The first five are ‘here is the nature of the shit we are in’. The last two are much more ‘but things are being done/can be done’. I TOTALLY get that you need to have some kind of arc, some kind of call to action. But you also need to remind people of the scale of the challenge and the need for much much more action at all levels of society. My fear is that those last two presentations will allow people to tick the box marked ‘I at least informed myself and anyway, things could get better.’ I wish there had been some sort of acknowledgement of this dynamic (which has played out repeatedly already).  Which brings us to

What is missing

Fifty minutes is not long, and if you’re trying to give all the speakers a fair shake, then, understandably you are going to end up with a certain “present-ism.”


But we really need to step back and see three things.


First, that the biodiversity crisis has been going on for a very very long time (hundreds of years). I may be wrong, but I didn’t hear anyone say ‘Sixth Extinction’.

Second, we should remember that Thatcher was told about carbon dioxide build-up repeatedly, from 1979 (that’s not a typo) onwards until finally making her pivotal speech in September 1988, and that until very recently there was an all-party consensus on the need for ‘urgent’ climate action.  And that there really wasn’t, once you take out the accounting tricks, much real UK action (Prof Kevin Anderson – a friend – nailed this, as he always does). So, it’s not as if our Lords and Masters weren’t dimly aware (and some of them are very dim) of the issue. It may be that information is not the actual problem here. 

Third that there have been repeated spasms (or, if you’re being less pejorative and more shiny happy) “waves” of concern about environmental matters.  The first big one was in the late 1960s through to the early 1970s.  Then another one between 1988 to 1992, then another from 2006 to 2009, and then one from 2018 to about 2020, when Covid came along and fried everyone’s brain. Alongside this we have seen states learn how to insulate themselves from public pressures. 


I have written about this a lot.  The two pieces I wish folks would read were these

There’s a third article I think is okay – Dear New Climate Activist (written 2018). And if you really want to go down the rabbit hole there are these about XR’s moment of maximum danger and a debate about whether it has (well, had) the right tactics. 

The point is, that social movements really struggle to sustain themselves, but withOUT an energised and engaged civil society, then governments and corporations do business as usual. The same business as usual that is wiping us out. See this from BHP, the world’s biggest mining corporation.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2026/may/25/bhp-files-internal-memo-revealed

George Monbiot’s latest column (May 27) is about the current government insulating itself from all critiques, all civil society input. It’s a good column but it too (for the same reasons as the film, mostly) also neglects to join the historical dots. There 

So, two final things.

The film calls on people to do three things

1.Spread the word

2. Join a group near you

3. Keep the pressure on the government


Hmmm.  That number two is – for a whole host of reasons – really really difficult. Groups fall apart, fingers and hearts get burned, and not in a ‘phoenix will rise’ kinda way, but in a ‘where shall we spread the ashes while singing a dirge?’ kinda way. If we are not honest abou t


The idea of film showings is great, but I have real concerns about how well this is executed.

The film showings MUST be short (intro, 50 minutes and then at most 40 minutes of other people, including a well-facilitated Q&A that is not (I repeat, NOT) dominated by speeches-’disguised’-as-questions from the usual suspects.

There are some really simple facilitation/meeting design techniques that can help with this, but I don’t see them being used anywhere, and I have my own reasons for believing it won’t happen (call me a cynic).

From 2014 – Meetings are institutionally sexist

From 2017 – We’ve got to stop meeting like this.

In their absence, new people will not get a word in edgeways, and the whole thing will be dominated by the usual suspects with – likely – the usual results.

(See also the aftermath of “The Age of Stupid” in 2008, “This Changes Everything” in 2014, Don’t Look Up etc etc (there have been some so bad I have tried to expunge them from my memory, a la Men In Black and the memory wand thing). There is an article to be written – “Documentary films/satires as tools of social change? Well, they could be, but not on their own…”)

Further reading

Interview with Abi Perrin: “academia isn’t responding robustly to a world that’s literally and metaphorically on fire”

Does anyone want me to do a seven minute “presentation I would have given at the NEB if they had asked me” post? If so, I will. If not, I am not sure I can be bothered (yes, I know I should use better bait when fishing for affirmation).

Categories
Australia Event Report

Event Report: Bob Hawke (and the things we don’t talk about often enough…)

When Bob Hawke became Prime Minister in March 1983, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels stood at 343ppm.

When he was unceremoniously dumped by the Labor Party in late 1991, after failing to effectively counter Liberal leader John Hewson’s Fightback! campaign, the level stood at 355ppm.

When he died in 2019, the atmospheric levels stood at 411ppm (they’re now pushing 430ppm).  I don’t intend to recap his climate mis-steps (see here) and missed opportunities (I did that already in this Conversation piece:  Bob Hawke, the environmental PM, bequeathed a huge ‘what if’ on climate change).  Nor do I intend to give a blow-by-blow account of who said what about what to whom tonight (a video was made and is already up – if you’re ‘into’ history, politics etc, it’s definitely worth your time.

What I intend to do is … serve up a few banalities and call it a day.

Banality one is that History is about what gets told and how. It’s also about what doesn’t get told (and how it is not talked about – usually by running out of time/focusing on something else.

Fortunately there wasn’t that much banality on display tonight at the Hawke (!) Centre on North Terrace. The event was to launch/publicise a new book ‘Gold Standard: Remembering the Hawke Government’.

It was ably compered (not facilitated!) by Misha Ketchell  of The Conversation, who had managed to tear himself away from The West Wing to serve up a series of more-than-perfunctory soft-ball questions to the three professional historians (and co-editors of the book). These were (drum roll please)

They covered a lot of ground, and wore their deep expertise lightly (this should of course, be the norm among academics, but trust me, it ain’t).

They (especially Holbrook) were good on the way the Hawke government came to loom large as a picture of stability after the 2007-2018 bloodbath of the Prime Ministers. (Fwiw I think the Hawke/Keating era looms large because it was ultimately the death of the Australian Settlement, something discussed at the end of the event by – iirc- Bongiorno).

They (especially Black) were good on the way that the media landscape (mass, social) has transformed out of all sight, and how much more difficult governance is now. There’s a story (not told tonight) of Julia Gillard pointing out that you could offer a huge detailed set of policy statements and the journos would be hungry again hours later. The beast is hungry hungry hungry, and that isn’t helping anyone. (Thomas Mayo covered some of this last week in his Nelson Mandela lecture at the same venue, btw, and it too is well worth your time) – here, inevitably, is my blogpost about that.

What they didn’t cover (at all, or in great depth for my monomania)

So, for me as a former Australian resident and occasional visitor (nearing the end of the latest visitation), a few trends/dilemmas strike me afresh every time I cross the girt sea. 

  • The flag-waving nationalism (see here for my reflections on that: Who stands for an anthem? Australia from the 1970s to the 2020s. There is also an excellent observation by would-be-host of tonight’s event, Hugh White, in a recent Quarterly Essay.)
  • The exquisite vulnerability to climate change (which is being accelerated by the relentless search for fossil fuels for export purposes:  The Australian Oil and Gas lobby has just finished its latest trade fair about 200m from the Hawke Centre. It faced only tiny protests, after State Premier Peter Malinauskas unleashed some nice authoritarian anti-protest laws in 2023).
  • The running sore of a lack of any real reconciliation with Aboriginal peoples (the acknowledgement of country at tonight’s event was pretty cursory, tbh). If October 7th hadn’t sucked all the oxygen out of the room, then the heart-breaking vote against the Voice would have really damaged Australia’s international standing.
  • The increase in inequality and the visible rise of rough sleeping (which is the merest sliver of the tip of the iceberg of homelessness etc).  The ‘cost of living’ crisis is a permacrisis for many. It was not always this bad, at least in Australia…

Not all of this can be sheeted home to Hawke, but Hawke’s record especially on climate, the failure to keep the 1988 promise of a Treaty, and the failures around public housing (alluded to near the end), deserved, in my opinion, a bigger chunk of tonight’s assessment.  It’s one thing to say you want to avoid hagiography, it’s another to actually avoid it. That said, this was a very nicely done event, and they did, after all, only have an hour. The closest we got to a discussion of neoliberalism (a word mentioned once or twice, almost in passing, and called ‘economic rationalism’ back in the day – though there are ongoing debates about whether those two are the same thing), was Black talking about ‘civil erosion’ the (global) collapse in trade union membership and so on, and then another mention in the context of too-much hagiography.

At this point Frank Bongiorno gave a shout out to his book about the 1980s, and pointed to a list of failures (of treaty, of public service reforms, of the marketization of services that would be better off under actual public control).

Interviewed long after being booted out of the Prime Ministerial role by her own party (sound familiar?) Margaret Thatcher was asked her greatest achievement. She said… Tony Blair.

Blair learned from Hawke/Keating – the early years of Blair gave me a real sense of déjà vu for the mid-80s, in terms of the way the political battles were fought. But I am a bit of a weirdo perhaps (1). 

The economy grows, but the problems, the pile of debris we call progress, also grew.  Now, 20 and 35 years after they left the stage, those problems are becoming impossible to ignore…

Footnote

 At the bus-stop on the way home (after a fabulous meal at Dino’s, the Greek place at the King William Street end of Hindley Street) we bumped the sixteen-ish year old daughter of a friend.  The mum is very smart, as is the daughter. I asked her is she knew who Bob Hawke was. Nope. But then, I don’t think at her age I knew who, say, Arthur Caldwell was. The caravan moves on.

To read/re-read/watch/rewatch

The Hawke/Keating Hijack by Dean Jaensch

Tom Uren’s biog (my favourite bit is the tale of the UK and Australian POW camps and their different survival rates. See also James Clavell’s novel of Changi – ‘King Rat’

Blanche D’Alpuget 1982 Robert J. Hawke: a biography, Schwartz,

Blanche D’Alpuget 2010. Hawke: the Prime Minister, Melbourne University Press, 

John Murphy An Unlikely Survival: The politics of welfare in Australia since 1950

True Believers TV Show – see this rebuttal.

Labour in Power 1993

Chris Wallace 2019 How to Win an Election

Tory Bramston Bob Hawke: Demons and Destiny

Categories
Activism Australia Event Report

Superior belling of the cat – but still leaves the “who is gonna DO it?” question.

Last night the Nelson Mandela lecture “Strengthening our Democracy – Valuing Our Diversity – Building Our Future” was delivered by Thomas Mayo, who is “an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander man, assistant National Secretary of the Maritime Union of Australia and author of seven books about First Nations history and justice.”

It was held at the Hawke Centre (more of that later) on North Terrace. Last time I was here was for a pre-Voice referendum event which left me disconsolate for its lack of strategic focus, and fearful for what was to come(1).  Last night I left with more ‘hope’, but still uneasy.

This was a night of three parts (four if you count the book signing afterwards, I guess).

First up there was an excellent “welcome to country.” These can vary in quality of course, but this one was done with empathy, honesty, clarity and good humour (especially the line about normally asking people to stand up, but given the tiered theatre and the audience demographics switching to plan B).  The woman welcoming us was of the Kaurna peoples, and also a member of the Pirltawardli Collective, trying to defend trees and animals from the State Government’s chainsaws. I didn’t catch her name, but will add it as soon as I can.

Second up there was a very good lecture by Thomas Mayo.  

The man knows how to grab an audience.  The anecdote about his Bob Marley fixation being joined by a love for Lucky Dube was great.

Mayo has a lovely voice, a lovely manner and – crucially – an actual working-class perspective to put.  It is all too rare to hear a full-throated defence of unions in public life.

In a paragraph – there are a series of pillars of Australian democracy (among these trades unions, recognition of First Nations, access to information, the right to protest), all of which have been under very deliberate sustained attack for decades. Mayo explained why each was important, what was being done to it and what needed to be done to defend the pillar/undo the damage.

Mayo also had useful things to say about Artificial Intelligence – and the need for a Universal Basic Income, and much else.

It was entirely competent, occasionally lyrical, but – back to that sense of unease – very much left me with ‘who will bell the cat?’ vibes. (This is from one of Aesop’s fables). The point is – there are all these good policies we are expecting ‘government’ to enact, but who is going to force the government to do the right things, when it is so obviously a plaything of the economic elites? “Braver mice” was the answer of someone earwigging my explanation to a friend. Braver mice sure, but who is brave, under what circumstances, for how long, to what purpose?

Anyway, that asides, Mayo’s speech was excellent and watching the video recording would be a good use of your time, whether you’re interested in defending (Australian) democracy, or learning how to structure a speech or to deliver it. Or something else.

As soon as the Hawke Centre people put up the recording, I’ll post it here and also blog it again.


The final portion was however, frankly painful, through no fault of Mayo. There were no questions from the audience, but rather Mayo was ‘in conversation’ with Peter Geste. This can work, but if the questioner is bold, engaging and bringing their A-game.  Not tonight; it was a polite/liberal avatar of Andrew Bolt in the room. Geste, presumably needing to defend his journalistic persona as ‘neutral,’ (2) was flipping through all the right-wing/nut-job (the Venn Diagram merges year after year) talking points. Doubtless among the thousand people joining the meeting via Zoom were some Murdoch hacks looking for a cheap headline about “ABC journo in soft-balling [insert dogwhistle adjective] activist.” Rather than asking any interesting questions, getting Mayo to expand on his arguments, Geste forced Mayo onto the back foot. It was frustrating and literally unedifying.  Geste is a man of undoubted courage and intelligence and this was all quite bewildering.

This could have been prevented if the Hawke Centre either

  1. Had a different interlocutor (Marcia Langton was in the room, for instance)
  2. Had had the guts to go to the floor for questions instead (though this comes with its own risks, of course).

Random reflections

  1. It is easy to give a list (litany) of what has been going wrong, and Mayo did it very well.


It is less easy to explore the underlying motivations/causes of what has been going wrong, and Mayo, in the margins, tackled this.


It is not easy at all to explore (in private and especially in public) the reasons why those wanting to make things worse for ordinary people and better for the big end of town have been winning, almost without pause, for a good 40 years.  That’s because speaking truth about power marks you out as a radical, and speaking truth about the failures of the forces trying to slow down/reverse the horrors will mark you out as a malcontent, who is ‘not constructive’ etc. Mayo did not attempt this at all, and while I totally understand (I think!) why he didn’t, it’s a pity, because if we don’t talk about the failures of the ‘progressive’ forces, the reasons for those failures, and what might be done to avoid history repeating itself again and again and AGAIN, well, history will probably repeat itself, with force.

As James Baldwin said – “not everything that can be faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

  1. One thing that makes it harder to defend democracy is the isolation and atomisation we all face. Part of this is to do with “technology,” part the sense of ‘speed up’ in our lives (real or imagined) and partly by the destruction of ‘third spaces’ where people can meet and be convivial and, well, civil.

The Hawke Centre COULD, if it wanted, take some really quick simple and no-financial cost actions around this. They COULD create a norm where every public lecture has a two or three minute ‘turn to someone you don’t know – probably someone sat behind or in front of you – and introduce yourselves’ at the beginning of their events, and similar before a Q&A.


I’ve written about the why and how of this, in case you’re interested

We’ve got to stop meeting like this

https://theconversation.com/weve-got-to-stop-meeting-like-this-81615

“Meetings are institutionally sexist”; discuss. (White-knighting by #Manchester #climate bloke)
“Meetings are institutionally sexist”; discuss. (White-knighting by #Manchester #climate bloke)

I don’t expect it will happen, but then, speakers like Mayo could insist on it until it became a new ‘norm’ of meetings.  And then, in a town like Adelaide, the informal ‘weak ties’ would become more numerous, loose networks would spread, information, ideas and resources would flow more easily.  

  1. It was the Hawke government that ratted out the Aboriginal communities on a Treaty, after basking in the applause of saying they’d sort one, back in 1988. (Aye, Barunga).

But then it’s not polite to mention these things…

Footnotes

  1. And so it came to pass – the Murdoch media’s assault, and the decision of Peter Dutton’s Liberal Party to be the absolute worst version of themselves, meant that a tsunami of lies swept away the possibility of basic respect.  Had it not been for the events of October 7th, Australia’s international reputation would have taken a massive hit.
  1. Many books have been written about what ‘neutrality’ and ‘objectivity’ mean in journalism. I ain’t gonna recapitulate except with a quote and a reference.

The quote – “if you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor” Desmond Tutu

The citation – 

Maxwell T Boykoff, Jules M Boykoff,

Balance as bias: global warming and the US prestige press,

Global Environmental Change,

Volume 14, Issue 2,

2004,

Pages 125-136,

ISSN 0959-3780,

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2003.10.001.

(https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378003000669)

Abstract: This paper demonstrates that US prestige-press coverage of global warming from 1988 to 2002 has contributed to a significant divergence of popular discourse from scientific discourse. This failed discursive translation results from an accumulation of tactical media responses and practices guided by widely accepted journalistic norms. Through content analysis of US prestige press—meaning the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and the Wall Street Journal—this paper focuses on the norm of balanced reporting, and shows that the prestige press’s adherence to balance actually leads to biased coverage of both anthropogenic contributions to global warming and resultant action.

Categories
Activism Australia biodiversity Event Report Fafocene

Event report: the Possum Park defence rally

Vibes aren’t going to cut it: What we (well, I) learn from the Possum rally

Last night I was at the rally on the steps of South Australian parliament protesting the cutting down of 585 mature trees in the North Parklands.


I should write something longer, coherent, but I don’t have time, energy (and perhaps talent). So instead, just a list of random observations. After that, the speech I would have liked to have given.

  1. From an emotional perspective, the whole thing was a success.  Those attending got their emotional needs met. Three obvious candidates here –
  • The cop who tried to push me onto the pavement instead of simply asking (did he get the uniform so he could literally push people around, or did he get the desire once he had the uniform? Chicken, meet Egg)
  • Some (#NotAllSpeakers) of the speakers, who were loving the attention (they wouldn’t be human if they didn’t). Special shout out to the person who read out a speech that had been written for a council meeting last night and almost lost the crowd (‘read the (lack of a) room’). You could have quickly pointed us to the video of that speech and said something else?
  • Those attending, who got to feel less lonely (that’s good) and more sane (it’s a crazy-making world). The repeated chants of ‘stop the chop’ are the progressive ‘left’s versions of the muscular bonding and chanting at sports events that hoi polloi get every weekend.
  1. Those attending (2000, according to the ABC, but we will come back to that) got some information they already knew, or could easily have found out. In terms of what to DO they got requests that amounted to (and did not go beyond) 
  • write to your MP
  • sign the petition 
  • get some stickers 
  • come to another rally on Sunday.

They were assured that the Federal Minister for the Environment had been written to. Well, that’ll show everyone. There were no calls on individuals who had turned up and were keen to know how they could contribute to 

  • Use and expand their skills
  • Use and expand their knowledge
  • Use and expand their relationships

Just people as an undifferentiated mass, a pulse of emotional energy, that will be gone like a fist when you open your palm.

We were told to ‘maintain our rage’, a cute line from someone who was not around when Whitlam said it.

  1.  Besides who WAS there (Kaurna spokespeople, Adelaide Parklands Association people, Adelaide City Council folks) there was one very very telling absence.

The Conservation Council of South Australia, the peak body for various green groups (the clue is in the name). Did they have any representation at the rally? Not that I saw. Certainly none of the speakers and their blog is entirely silent.

This is not surprising. The CCSA is dependent, financially, on the State Government, and knows it would not be forgiven for biting the hand that feeds it.  At this point it is simply a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Labor government.  This is a tragedy, but there you have it. 

UPDATE 15/7/2026. Last night (14/5/2026) CCSA sent around an email encouraging people to attend the next demo, on Sunday. Their website is still silent on the question. Make of this what you will.

4. The media coverage was hilarious and instructive. 

The 7pm ABC TV news of South Australia framed it as ‘no violence happened though police were present’ (yes, and if it meets the needs of the state for there to be violence, doubtless the police – in uniform or plain clothes – will be happy to provide it). There were two vox pops that focussed on the animal livelihoods aspect, not on the far more sinister State government powergrab aspect.   Meanwhile, the ‘Advertiser’ (Murdoch toilet paper, the only print paper in town) … pretended it had not happened. Not a single word, because their pet Malinauskus is doing what they like, generally. They had an ‘exclusive’ from him (presumably planned as a spoiler?) about overturning a fracking ban.  At this point the Advertiser should just rename as the Santos Sturmer.

Don’t get me wrong. Rallies matter.  Good signs are good signs.

But it is not enough. We have been here so many times. So so so many times. If we don’t use rallies for MORE than feeling good in the moment, for supplying ego-fodder and being ego-fodder, then more losses will pile up, while the pile of debris that gets called progress grows skyward. 

Maybe this campaign will win – it’s the future, so I don’t know.  But IF it wins, it hasn’t laid any ground work for future bigger campaigning sinews, relationships, skills, knowledge, expectations. And if it loses, then people will just have more grounds for despair.

Below is the three minute (ish) speech that could have been given. 

Hypothetical speech to Rally.

Thank you for coming. That you are here matters. But it doesn’t matter ENOUGH.

I want us to reflect on who we are, what are we even doing here, and what we must do in the coming days, weeks and months.

Who are we? 

Some of us here have ancestors who were here, on this land, thousands and thousands of years ago. (hopefully applause).
Some of us maybe trace our history with this land to 1836 or thereabouts, when South Australia was ‘settled’.  (pause) . South Australia was not settled. South Australia was invaded. And sovereignty was never ceded.

Some of us maybe trace our history to the last 50 or 20 years.  

But this is home. All of us here tonight, we know this land, this air, this water, these other creatures we share with, is precious. We know it is fragile, and that it must be protected from those who know the price of everything and the value of nothing. We know it must be protected from people who have no respect for nature, or for democracy, for anything than their wretched careers and bank accounts.

Do we know this?

(Hopefully everyone yells “yes”)

Do you – you, me, everyone –  want to protect this land, this air, the possums, the birds, the humans, the future generations?

(Hopefully everyone yells yes).

Okay. That was the easy part.

What are we even doing here?

I have bad news. Besides the trees being cut down, besides the naked powergrab by the State Government. The bad news is that while you being here now, today, is great – and thank you for coming – it is not enough.

Is it enough?

(Hopefully people shout ‘no’).

Can we do more?


Can we do more?

(Hopefully people yell ‘Yes’)

Will we do more?  Do you, as an individual, commit to doing more?

(Hopefully people yell ‘Yes’)

Okay, so this is where it gets interesting. I do NOT have a short list you can tick off. – “sign here, donate there. Tick that, next campaign.”  Sorry.

But I do have some pledges for you, me, all of us to make.  They want to destroy 585 trees, homes to birds, animals. 585.  So I am going to close out with three pledges.

Does each of you pledge to talk, in the coming days, with five people who don’t know about what is happening? To listen to them, to inform them, to help them take a stand. Five people. Do you pledge this?

(Hopefully ‘yes’)


We need Peter Malinauskus and the Labor Party more generally to know that they have made a mistake, but that it is not yet too late for them to do the right thing.

Eight sentences.  Do you pledge to write an eight sentence letter to Malinauskus, and send a copy to your MP -about this.  Not War and Peace; Just eight sentences, which maybe you show to those five people, to your local councillors and that you post online?

Do you pledge this?

(Hopefully ‘yes’)

This is great. Thank you. But this is not enough.  We need more. So a final pledge is coming up..

We need artists, poets, songs. We need tiktok videos, we need memes, slogans. We need blogs. We need letters to the Advertiser.  Sorry- I was just playing with you.  We need to bypass the Murdoch media. We need lawyers, we need conversations, we need networks. We need people standing outside football matches with placards and information about what is being done by this government, and in whose benefits. We need – well, we need more ideas than I have, we need all the ideas, skills and energy that YOU have. 

Does each of you pledge to go home from here and – alone or with your friends – come up with a list of five things you all can do, with your knowledge, your skills, your networks, your time?  Then DO those things, get better at those actions. Share those actions? Do you?

(Hopefully ‘yes’)

  • Talk to five people
  • Write an eight sentence letter to the Premier and your MP 
  • Come up with a list of five things to do.

If you pledge it, then on three, 585!

(hopefully people chant 585)