Incredible! We’ve now had 127 supporters sign the petition to change our government system. I’m continually amazed and excited by the support given by various people both on and off the platform.

This week has been quite tumultuous in our government and now more than ever we need to be aware of what is going on in government, internally and globally facing. One such issue I believe we face which underwrites many aspects is potential bias. Much of the media and political speak is geared specifically to create bias. You’ll see this in statements like “stop the boat people”, “China is spying through tech companies”, and “support X party, because they’re like you”. There’s a lot of misinformation in each of these issues, but the main point here is to ensure we capture and explore the issues in their entirety and not be led by the opinions of the few. A good exercise when hearing or listening to subject matter experts is to question their motivations and potential “sponsors”, ask what the opposite question is, and internally observing your own reaction to the news (does it make you angry or excited, happy or inspired) to ensure we’re not falling victim to internal and external bias. We need fair and extensive investigation on issues and bias is a large roadblock to that.

Following on from this, I’ve been thinking a lot about representation this week. A famous line in history you’ll no doubt have heard “no taxation without representation”. I believe we need to do more to ensure all people in Australia are better represented. Ultimately by the individuals themselves, but in any form of governance we need proper representation of the diverse and beautiful differences our people share. A look at our current government and you’ll see it is doing a very poor job of this. And while the site may have its flaws the ‘Demography of Australia’ article on Wikipedia captures the diversity of our population quite well, and in comparing that with our sitting parliament you’ll see how misaligned and lacking parliament is. We need to make a change. 

To ensure we’re not surcoming to these problems ourselves, I urge you to leave your thoughts and ideas here or on various platforms. The more information we can share and more people we can include, the stronger our ideas become.