Where Are We At With Democracy?

David Curnow (00:09)

Hello and welcome to Where Are We At With? The podcast that tries to explore the promises of the future made in the past. I'm David Curnow. Democracy can be a bit strange. It's been around for millennia, but it's never quite the same wherever it's practiced. While you might worry about not having it, it is also possible to have too much of it. Let's face it, if every single person got to vote on every single decision, it would be democracy. It would also be chaos. Not only that, while you and I, and all of those “Where Are We At With…?” listeners are highly discerning and responsible folk who would always obviously make the right decision, what about those poor voters without our intellect, our insight? Would they make the correct choices?

Clip from Yes Prime Minister

Well of course they would if they could understand, but the ordinary voters are simple people, they don’t see their needs. They need leadership. And don’t you think people would vote for that leadership? Well the people don’t always understand what’s good for them.

So, a mark against being too democratic then. Then again, grant those in power yet more power, well then you're getting closer to a dark side of governance.

Clip from Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith

So, this is how liberty dies, with thunderous applause.

Satire and cinematic hyperbole aside, democracy has been on a bit of a rough ride in its recent iterations. The United States often claims to be the champions of it, but there, even now, the person who says he's not a king says elections aren't really needed anyway. The world's largest democracy, India, moves ever closer to being able to only vote for one party, and in Australia the interests of large corporations and lobby groups appear to have quite outsized influence on the decisions of politicians, those people whose very title declares them “of the people”. Our guest today helped found the Australian Democracy Network in 2020, an advocacy group that aims to create a healthy democracy that is more fair, open and accountable. ADN CEO Saffron Zomer, and Where Are We At With Democracy?

David (02:29)

Saffron Zomer thank you so much for your time today.

Saffron (02:31)

So welcome, it's my pleasure to be here.

David (02:33)

Before we get into democracy proper, do you like voting in Australia? Do you like the line, the pamphlet thrusters, the tiny pencil, the cardboard boxes and I'm going to guess the sausage, if you're lucky.

Saffron (02:42)

I love it. Who doesn't love voting in Australia? I love it every single time I get to go and do it. And for many years before I was able to vote, I was looking forward to it. Yeah, I love voting.

David (02:53)

Some people look forward to driving, perhaps naughtily looking forward to their first drink. You look forward to having a vote.

Saffron (02:58)

Yeah, I mean, I think in the places that I vote, it generally has a pretty festive air. There's fundraising, there's cakes, there's sausages, there's coffee. There's people exercising this really excellent democratic privilege that people fought and died for in this lovely atmosphere. And there's generally a peaceful transfer of power afterwards. So I think that's all something that we should celebrate every time it happens.

David (03:22)

A peaceful transfer of power between the cake stall and the local school. Let's talk then about democracy. What is it? And can you have true and complete democracy?

Saffron (03:35)

So democracy is essentially a system of government where power resides in the people. As you're probably aware, it comes from the Greek, so demos means people, kratos means power, so the ultimate power resides in the citizenry and not in a king or an autocrat. That's the essential feature of any democratic system. I don't think that you can have a complete democracy and you know, if you reflect on the fact that democracy was born in ancient Athens and worked well then and is still working well in modern Australia, it would be surprising if that were the fact and there had been no innovations or adaptations or tweaks along the way. So I think it's a system that is designed to embrace constant renegotiation, rebalancing of priorities, reimagining. And honestly, I feel like if you ever got to a point where you're like, okay, like our democracy is perfect now, like we've totally nailed it, just freeze this frame, the world will change around you and you'll have to innovate again. I think that's how it should be.

David (04:37)

Yeah. And there are occasionally sounds like that that come out of our American colleagues over the years, but perhaps they're learning lessons as we speak. Let's not talk about that now. Let's talk about you though, because you mentioned the idea of looking forward to voting. What is your background? When did you first feel like you had a bit of a social justice inkling?

Saffron (04:55)

I don't actually remember a time when I didn't have one. There must be like a gene marker for this inclination. I mean, honestly, David, like to give you a sense of what I'm talking about. When I was a little girl, I used to get pocket money from my grandparents. And at the end of the month, I'd tip out the piggy bank and split it 50-50 and half of whatever I had at the end of the month would go to the RSPCA, which is my favourite charity at the time. Really? Because I just couldn't stand the idea that these innocent animals had fallen on hard times and had no agency to like make things right for themselves. And I thought that was not fair and that we ought to fix it. And I wanted to be part of fixing it. So yes, and along with the money, I used to send them quite a bit of unsolicited advice on how to their organization and do their fundraising. So have been oriented that way since I can remember. Australian Democracy Network was, I founded in 2020. And the reason for that, I've been working in the climate movement overseas and here for quite a long time. And yeah, becoming more and more frustrated with our inability to make progress on some very pressing social issues. And I guess that the realization that I came to is that in a democratic system like we have here in Australia, actually every big decision is negotiated through a democratic process. And if the process itself isn't working well, then you will get bad outcomes consistently across the board. It doesn't matter whether it's climate or housing or health care, any of these things, if the democratic system isn't working the way it's supposed to, we can't make the progress that we need to make. So I think of democracy as being like a skeleton key, you you make your democracy work better and you unlock potential for progress on every single thing that you care about. So I created Australian Democracy Network to be a place where people and organizations who care about democracy could come together around strategic opportunities to make it work better because that's an essential part of how we're going to create the world that we want to live in

David (06:52)

A lot of people have a social justice bent. They like the idea of making things better, particularly making things better for other people. Not a lot of them found an entire network that's designed to lobby governments and others involved. It's a big undertaking.

Saffron (07:06)

Yes. And I am a bit of a future problem minimizer. So probably if I had understood exactly how big it was, I might've thought twice before inviting you on this, honestly, David, I feel like we are living at the end of time. So if there was ever a time to try something big and bold, it's round about now. Have no regrets. Stand out great.

David (07:27)

Okay, I look forward to talking about this a little bit in a moment because you founded the Australian Democracy Network after starting out focusing particularly on charities. Tell us a little bit about charities and your work there and why that's important to a democracy.

Saffron (07:42)

Yeah. Charities? Well, I guess before I launch in, I'll say this, that I think we use the word charities to describe what are actually community organisations. And I think that word charity has some baggage of like giving arms to the poor or the fortunate looking after the unfortunate. That's not actually the way charities in Australia operate for the most part, because they do provide services to people who need them. But they're much more about advocating for a better world and a more just world. So, yeah just to say like we use the word charities but I think we aren't exactly charities in the way that that word traditionally means. community organisations play three critical roles in a democratic society. I think the first one is that we are a place where citizens can learn the skills of public life. So, you you're not born knowing how to be an active citizen. You have to learn it somewhere. And often civil society organizations are the place that people learn how to get involved in public life in a meaningful way, how to start a petition, how to think about lobbying an MP, like how to write a letter to the editor. So, you know, with civic skills in decline, I think that's a really critical function and irreplaceable one actually. So that's the first thing. The second thing is that community organisations are the way that communities advocate for themselves and create a platform to have a say in decisions that will impact them. And that's obviously another really critical democratic function. The third one is a kind of translation role. So if the government drops an 800 page piece of legislation, who knows what effect it's going to have on our lives. We're probably not going to take the time to read that legislation and we may not understand even if we did, charities will go and do that work for us and explain to us exactly what the government's decisions are going to mean for us. And that's critical to political accountability because if we don't understand what government is doing, how can we help them to account? know, with budget coming up now, I can guarantee you there will be so many hardworking charity staff in the budget lockup, trawling through those wretched budget papers to explain to us exactly what it means. So taken all together, the translation, the advocacy and the ability to pick up the civic skills that you need to really be an active participant in public life. think we can't do without our charities. would lose an enormous amount if we lose charities from civic space in Australia.

David (10:09)

Where is there a danger then to charities if we talk about losing them, where can they be harmed?

Saffron (10:16)

Well, there are lots of ways that governments can stymie charities if they want to and unfortunately, it is a hallmark of regressive government that they tend to crack down on advocacy because advocates can be very critical of government policies and they help people organize and be more effective in resisting government policy. So naturally, if you are a regressive government, that's an obvious place to go. So at Australian Democracy Network, we are part of the Stronger Charities Alliance, which started about 12 or 13 years ago now in response to a series of attacks from our own government on our own civil society, cracking down on our ability to advocate for our causes and communities. They did that through a whole range of ways, through our tax deductibility status, through electoral law, through charities law, but the intention was always to make it harder for charities to speak up, particularly around election times.

David (11:14)

And what are some of those restrictions when it comes to charities? Because some of those are still in place as we speak.

Saffron (11:18)

Yeah, we're certainly doing much better than we have in previous years. But to give you an example, it used to be common practice that if you received government funding as part of your charitable work, you could be subjected to a gag clause so that you couldn't critique government whilst receiving government funds. So that's obviously just a completely unacceptable limitation on advocacy. And fortunately, that requirement has been removed. So gag clauses are no longer legal, but we hear anecdotally that the practice does continue in a small way. So that's one example of how a government can stop a charity from speaking up.

David (11:57)

I guess it makes sense on one level, you talk about receiving a lot of money that's taxpayer money, if that that organization makes you look bad, perhaps you're not as willing even subconsciously to go ahead with the financing. But as you say, that also then restricts the charity's ability to effectively do what it's there for supporting certain groups, be they animal, be they people, be they different nationalities or whatever it might be.

Saffron (12:21)

Yeah, and I think it's important to remember that, you know, advocacy is often framed in a kind of combative way, but actually charitable advocates are really important part of getting good policy outcomes because they are in the communities, they're dealing with the problems every day, and they speak for and with those communities who have a lot of very important things to say about how to solve the problems that they're experiencing. So we will get government policy that works better if they are listening to community voices including charities.

David (12:53)

And that's not just charities, but also not just gas companies, not just fossil fuel companies, etc. It has to be a range of voices, doesn't it? How does Australia's regulation on charities and whether it's the way they speak, the way that they funded that sort of thing compared to other similar nations, I suppose, if you compare us to westernized economies, at least when it comes to the United States, United Kingdom, New Zealand, for instance.

Saffron (13:00)

Correct, yes. I mean, I think that depends to which country you are comparing us. Where you see democracy in retreat, you will almost always see marked crackdowns on charitable advocacy. So you mentioned the US. I'm in touch with colleagues in the States regularly who are losing funding, losing charitable status, facing all kinds of attacks to close them down. And that is a very typical thing that you see when you see a government becoming less democratic because as I said before they understand that our organizations are a critical part of democracy if they're not particularly interested in a robust vibrant democracy it's an obvious place to look to shut things down.

David (14:00)

There are some who argue that charity is effectively an organization doing something that the government hasn't bothered to do. Therefore, if the government does it better, we don't need that charity. Does that hold any water?

Saffron (14:11)

No, I don't think so. I think they're very different entities. A charity is nothing like a government and they do work collaboratively a lot of the time but I wouldn't conflate them in that way. 

David (14:24)

Okay, Saffron Zomer is our guest on Where Are We At With? We're looking at democracy. Yes, it's a reasonably big question. She is the CEO and founder of the Australian Democracy Network. We'll be talking about some of the roles that you play when it comes to advocacy and indeed speaking to those in power about making certain decisions. Let's move to another though of the core tenets when it comes to the ADN, the right to protest. We mentioned the idea of the fact that advocacy can sometimes be combative. The fact that standing up in front of a news camera or posting something online criticizing somebody feels combative. Protesting seems like the next step. Why is that important to a democracy?

Saffron (15:03)

Protest is a critical democratic right and freedom that is absolutely essential to any functional democracy and important to remember that it's often the way that the people with the least social power and political capital are able to participate in public debate. But protests also work and when asking nicely doesn't work, protest is usually the next step. So they're a very effective way of making social change and the world that we're living in today would look radically different if the protest movements of the past hadn't been successful in winning freedoms and progress for us that we all benefit from now.

David (15:38)

There are some really quite significant ones when we look back at the history of, of protest. And sometimes we don't even think of them, I suppose, as protests now, but such a lot of parts of our life, both here in Australia and other places have been affected. What are some of the core ones for you that you can think of?

Saffron (15:54)

Well, an obvious one, I suppose, would be the fact that I can vote. That wasn't the case when Australia was first a democracy. Women didn't vote at all. And I think it's a good example because now most of us see with perfect clarity that the cause of the suffragettes’ movement was quite just and then it wasn't fair that women didn't get to vote. But at the time, they were seen as very unseemly women who didn't know their place. In fact, today, I think we might say that they were undermining social cohesion that a view of them at the time. And the suffragettes had spent a long time asking nicely, they'd been writing pamphlets, meeting with decision makers, holding public meetings, all of those things. And they escalated because it wasn't working. The men in power did not intend to do as they were being asked. And they were deliberately quite a provocative protest movement. They attempted to storm parliament, they chained themselves to the doors of parliament house, you know, they'd stopped traffic, that they were, they were very disruptive protesters and people at the time really didn't appreciate their style. And I think today we often frame protests in that way, like how inconvenient it is and how annoying it feels to be inconvenienced by a protest movement. Unfortunately that is often the hallmark of an effective protest movement and it's useful I think to just remember with the arc of history that the things that these protest movements fight for generally turn out to be on the right side of history.

David (17:25)

Why do we think that is? Why do we think that the more disruption, the more it's likely to be successful? How does that work when it comes to decision makers paying attention?

Saffron (17:35)

Well, I guess the reason that most protest movements eventuate is that those in power do not want to deal with the issue and the kind of usual avenues to get something dealt with aren't working. So naturally, if you're trying to get something on the agenda and those in power are resisting you, you're going to have to escalate.

David (17:54)

What about the other citizens, the other voters? Because sometimes I think a lot of Australians at least can be guilty of perhaps resenting the actions of those who have disrupted their morning commute or their ability to get home on that particular bus. Do people generally accept other people's protests well?

Saffron (18:13)

Yeah, I, I think it is reasonable. is annoying to have your commute disrupted. And I suppose that's why I go back to an example like the suffragettes, because the matters at stake are very important. They're big things that people are trying to achieve. And if not for these protest movements, you know, we would have dirty, great oil rigs on the Great Barrier Reef. We would have a massive dam on the Franklin. These are big mistakes that governments were intent on that protest. movements avoided. And yeah, like it's hard to imagine the world today without universal suffrage, but it wasn't on the cards. It was something that people fought for and won. So yes, I acknowledge that people can find it annoying. And I suppose my, caution would be just, you know, remember that your, your commute being interrupted today, you know, if you balance it over the long term with your right to vote, you might feel differently about it.

David (19:08)

That's right. When we look at protests and the way that they're conducted and the way that they're dealt with by different governments, I suppose you only have to look at Tiananmen Square to see the opposite effect of how governments can deal with them. What sort of restrictions are there in Australia when it comes to protests? What are the ways that protests themselves are being threatened?

Saffron (19:26)

Yeah, that's a good question. And I think it's worth saying that over the last 10 or 15 years, there have been a series of regressive laws passed to limit our right to protest in pretty much every jurisdiction around the country, including federally. And these are laws that increase the penalties for protest, like restrict the places that you can protest. They take different approaches to it. But in every case, they are unreasonably curtailing what is an essential democratic right and freedom to assemble. And so it's not like it happened in one fell swoop. It's happening step by step and unfortunately, oftentimes accompanied by really problematic narratives from our leaders that other and demonise people who are using their democratic right to protest in a way that aligns with their conscience. So I am concerned, I think the right to protest is a real canary in the coal mine. It's often the case that you'll see that as the first step that regressive governments take to crack down on citizens speaking up. And as you say, like for a lot of us, we haven't this generation in Australia, we haven't had to fight our democracy, we've just been, you know, grown up with it, we have it like wallpaper and so I think for us it can be easy to not fully appreciate the importance of those democratic rights. If you talk to people who come from less democratic places and are living in Australia now, they have a very different evaluation of how important democratic freedoms are.

David (21:03)

You mentioned the fact that restriction to place on things like where you can protest, when I suppose those sorts of things, are they being driven purely by decision makers? it purely personal safety or are those decisions being driven through voices from other industries?

Saffron (21:18)

Look, it's difficult to find a smoking gun in any of these cases, but I think it's definitely the case in Australia and in other countries where you see protest restrictions happen, that it is often at the behest of some special interest who finds the protest movement inconvenient and useful to see some of the parallels with other kinds of democratic incursions. For example, the Stronger Charities Alliance that I mentioned earlier that defends our right to advocate. That got started because the Minerals Council made a declaration back I think in 2014 that they thought that charities should just stick to planting trees and acts of service and give up on advocacy. The Federal Council of the Liberal Party passed a matching resolution not long after and that was the beginning of 10 years of charities having to fight for our right to be able to advocate for our causes and communities. So whilst it's not always possible to draw a clean line. It's not like I'll hand you a big bag of money and you'll write me a piece of legislation. Influence doesn't happen that way but certainly I think that there is a connection and it's a really troubling one.

David (22:34)

A lot of restrictions often are directly responsive to the style of protests of their time, effectively governments and or possibly police, looking at the ways disruptions occurred, the methods that protesters have used and targeting those specifically. Have protest methods changed over years as a result?

Saffron (22:51)

I mean, I don't think that you could say you could you could generalise too much about that. think protests are inherently like quite creative and, you know, they use the good protests and, know, as with anything, protests can be strategic and well deployed or less strategic and less well deployed. But generally, they'll choose tactics that match the moment. And that can often be like humorous, so yeah, think, no, I wouldn't say that they've changed in significant ways, but I would say each protest movement is very adaptive to the particular circumstances that it's in appropriately.

David (23:26)

I mean, I guess the Shearers or the Suffragettes didn't have social media. So that's immediately going to change the way that the message is put out there. But things like devices where you can lock your hands in a steel tube or something and police will then say, well, that's dangerous to the police. So therefore we have to restrict it. There are some, I suppose, creative ways of making the protest last longer.

Saffron (23:46)

Sure, absolutely. People can superglue themselves onto things and yes, use lock-on devices. But I actually think that the focus on those things is not that useful because people have always found ways to make their protests meaningful and they just use the tools that they have at hand. I don't think that the fact that people didn't have lock-on devices that look exactly like what they use now, know, 200 years ago made a material difference to the way that they chose to use their voice to raise issues, get them onto the public agenda.

David (24:20)

I guess I asked that because it's interesting to note the way that police training has adapted to include crowd dispersal and the ability to effectively render somebody immobile or the locks or holds that police will use. That has changed over time. And in a sense, the police are far more, it appears on the surface, willing to use that sort of physical action to disrupt and disperse.

Saffron (24:42)

Yeah, I think you're right that the approach to policing protests is getting more aggressive and unfortunately, I think that our political leaders are not providing proper accountability for that. But you know, like pepper spray is not a new thing. It's just that we're seeing it being deployed more and more aggressively on people who are not doing anything aggressive. just being gratuitously sprayed. Yeah, when you talk about other tools of policing like sound cannons or things that we haven't really seen in Australia before, I agree that's a really concerning escalation. But I think the main point is that police should be facilitating protest and the only limitations on our right to protest that are acceptable are ones that are proportional and keeping people safe which is obviously a top priority. That's not the way that protests are generally being policed at the moment and that's a problem.

David (25:37)

Protest laws in various states are different. At times, from an outsider looking in, it almost seems like the governments can be competing for the vote of those who want to seem stronger. Is that sometimes the case that effectively governments, it's almost performative, some of the decision making there?

Saffron (25:53)

Yes, I mean it's probably not my place to try and imagine why governments take the decisions that they do. I think you're right, the kind of law and order narratives can seem politically expedient at times and I think oftentimes there's a real knee-jerk kind of characteristic to the way that these laws happen. They can be really rushed. They're not consulted and generally I think they're not proportionate because they don't take the time to consider what would actually be required.

David (26:22)

We'll move away from that and not make you make any concerning statements about governments and their decision making and reasons for them. But very briefly though, the role of police and courts often is very important to democracy.

Meme clip from Channel 7 1991

Gentlemen, this is democracy manifest. What is the charge? Eating a meal? Eating a succulent Chinese meal?!

David

These are people enforcing the law, supposedly, but under their own interpretation. What role do they play?

Saffron (26:52)

Well, I guess, you know, when the courts and police are working well, they are upholders of our rights and freedoms and enforce the rule of law, which should apply equally to everyone in democracy, of course. And when they're not working well, they can erode those rights. And, you know, I think it's well established that protest actions fall, the brunt of them falls more heavily on certain people than on other people for sure, although no one's immune from it. So I guess it's a better question maybe is not what's their role, but how well are they performing their role in terms of upholding our rights and freedoms and making sure that limitations that are placed on those rights are strictly proportionate. And I think there's some room for improvement.

David (27:38)

Where are those areas? What are some of the broad areas that we can improve on from a police and courts perspective?

Saffron (27:43)

well, yeah, generally, I think, the approach to allowing protests to happen has been patchy. So sometimes you'll see, you know, one protest being permitted whilst another one is denied. Some of them seem really questionable. You might remember seeing Nazis protesting outside of New South Wales Parliament. Like there's some really strange decisions that are made. So I think that really undermines people's trust in the system. When police get involved and how they get involved, whether they escalate or de-escalate in particular situations, and then how political leaders talk about what happened and hold police to account for how they have behaved. I think all of those areas we could see higher standards for sure. And then when legislation is being passed, yeah, making sure that it's consultative, that it it's proportionate that it actually meets international standards that we're required to adhere to room for improvement there as well.

David (28:44)

The very fact that a protest requires a permit itself seems to defeat the whole idea of a protest. Have you got your permission slip? Yes. Are you doing it in the correct location? Yes. Are the doors locked? Yes. It kind of is ironic in the sense of that's what a protest is about.

Saffron (28:57)

Yeah, I agree. I think like if it's working well, then it could be a sign that, you know, the police are committed to facilitating safe protests. So they just want to know that you're going to be out there protesting and they'll make sure that, you know, they're, you know, accommodate for that. But that's not actually the way that it works in practice.

David (29:14)

Okay, Saffron Zomer is our guest on Where Are We At With. We are looking at the very small topic of Where Are We At With Democracy? As we know, Winston Churchill is quoted as saying it's the worst form of government except for all the other ones. And it's well worth working at. Let's talk to the process itself, voting and making decisions. Australia has a system which is preferential. I don't vote for the leader of the nation, so to speak, and nor do you. How do you think it compares, from what you've seen because you've travelled around the world and looked at different democratic systems?

Saffron (29:43)

I mean, I think as far as our electoral system goes, it's excellent. We're very lucky to have the electoral system that we do and our Electoral Commission enjoys deservedly extremely high trust here in Australia. So that's a real strength of our democratic system. I think a lot of people don't necessarily understand it very well. Preferential voting is less obvious than first-past-the-post systems and we know because there's been some investigations into this recently that a civics education in Australia isn't as good as it could be. A lot of people don't really understand how to use their vote in the way that they want to. But overall I would say if you're assessing the system itself, we're doing pretty well and preferential voting is a good system especially in combination with compulsory voting that we have. There are some other things that I think are underappreciated too though like voting on a Saturday I worked in the States for a number of years and when you ask people to vote on a work day especially in a place with such poor workers rights as the USA, it actually means that some people can't vote because they can't get off work and then you'll see people still in lines at 6.30 and they're just not actually going to get in to cast their vote. some of the ways that you implement the system can also make a difference to how well it works.

David (31:01)

If nothing else, can't stop for a sausage if you have to get back to work. It's just not fair.

Saffron (31:04)

So true, it is far less festive.

David (31:06)

What are the ways then that we can improve? Not having it on a Tuesday, I think is a fairly good system. Let's be clear. What are some of the ways that we perhaps when it comes to the actual electoral system itself could improve?

Saffron (31:10)

Yes. Well, I think the main one that comes to mind for me is that we don't do a great job of making sure that those of us who live in really remote parts of the country get fair access to our electoral system and that has particular impact on Indigenous communities which tend to be really remote. Again, like making sure that everybody has the education that they need to use their vote in the way that they want to would be another way that we could improve. But I would actually ask a slightly different question than that, David, if it's ok… 

David (31:50)

You're allowed to.

Saffron

…which is that, you know, given that our electoral system is actually so good, a better question might be what other aspects of our democracy could we reimagine or invest in so that they could be as good as our electoral system is.

David (32:04)

Okay. I feel like I'm at a Kevin Rudd press conference of years gone past where he would ask the questions and answer them. And I'm very much happy with that because it saves me a lot of work. Let's talk about them. What are some of the ways, where are the areas of weaknesses? We've spoken about the fact that the ADN is looking at charities about the right to protest. The other two key ones are the corporate roles and civics. You've mentioned civics. So let's go there. The idea of students learning enough. I don't think any amount of high school teaching is going to get them to understand the preferential voting system when it comes to the Shooters and Fishers party getting a seat in the Senate. But why is there an issue with civics and what is being left out?

Saffron (32:36)

No. Yeah, so the previous Parliament did quite a good inquiry into this which is called Classroom to Community. You can find that on their website if you're interested in reading it up. But they found a lot of gaps in for the school-aged cohort across the curriculum where there were opportunities to teach civics and they weren't really being met or they were being met inconsistently is probably a more accurate way of putting it. One of the things I found very interesting about that report is that a lot of the teachers that spoke to that inquiry said that they don't actually feel like they're well equipped to teach civics, they don't know the content themselves. And so before we start to insist that there is more school time for civics or whatever, we actually have to address that problem as well that our educators feel like they are resources and supported to teach the content. But it's not limited to the school age cohort, of course. Like all of us have to engage in this across the course of our lifetimes. And, you know, for many people voting now, there was no social media or, you know, things have changed so much since they might have been in school themselves. So civics is something that we should think of as an ongoing process where we're educating ourselves across all of our age cohorts. And then obviously for newer Australians who might not have grown up with our system, they also need particular kinds of content and they might need it in different languages. So I think thinking about civics and where we have gaps should be much broader than just thinking about the school curriculum even though that is very important.

David (34:11)

Yeah, I mean, I can only speak anecdotally, this isn't in any way proof, but I know that at least my daughters learned their civics in legal studies classes, which is great. If you choose to do legal studies, there's effectively a seems to be a bit of a gap there when it comes to teaching of the civics, though, what, what is it that people need to be taught? What, what do people need to understand? 

Saffron (34:32)

Hmm, think, well, there's the obvious bits of it, which are, you know, how does a bill become a law? Like, what's the voting system do? What's the Australian government understanding the basic concepts like separation of powers, the rule of law, these things? I, I think it's clear that we know what that content is. And it's just a question of making sure that we're delivering it in ways that are engaging at the right age, all of that kind of thing. I think the second layer, though, is now that we know, know all of us are navigating these very difficult disinformation filled environments which are only going to get worse as artificial intelligence becomes more and more omnipresent. The kind of media literacy and critical thinking skills that will equip people to be able to be safe and be discerning as they're navigating these  environments are also a really critical part of how we set people up to be good citizens.

David (35:30)

And of course, that's not necessarily about civics, not necessarily about learning what Australia's governor general's role is. This is about core media literacy and in a sense, critical literacy, something that was criticized, I know, a number of years ago by those in certain aspects of the media. the idea of interpreting what is disinformation versus something that might be true. Why is that important when it comes to democracy?

Saffron (35:53)

Well, if you imagine just like giving people some basic critical thinking skills so that you see a piece of content and you're primed to wonder, why is this appearing in my feed? Who might be making money off me seeing this? Like in whose interests is it for me to read this message? Is it authorized? You know, is the material coming from a place that I trust or can I not actually figure out who the author was? Even just understanding that you need to ask those questions immediately puts you in a far more resilient position where you can critically evaluate what's coming in in terms of messages and political messages. I don't think there are any silver bullets in this space and that's why I think the education piece is so important because if you regulate these environments you can bet that the environment will adapt to whatever regulations we. So we're now going to have a clean and safe information environment for foreseeable future at least. That's, certainly not saying that we shouldn't be regulating these spaces, I think we should, but I think also just empowering people to be critical thinkers as they're consuming information is going to put us in a much better place. And there's plenty of evidence in terms of assessing countries that have had these kinds of comprehensive media literacy for their populations that they are far more resilient to disinformation than places which don't.

David (37:22)

Yeah, I mean, I suppose it's one thing 30, 40 years ago to discern the difference between one particular newspaper organization versus another one particular broadcast organisation versus another why is Channel Nine trying to tell me this while the ABC is saying this and where are the failings of both of them. But to get it in your TikTok feed that just keeps hammering you day in day out with information that may or may not be true. It makes it kind of hard, doesn't it?

Saffron (37:47)

Well, and also I just think like we're not primed to be that sceptical, you know, like I'm looking at a picture of a dog leaning over a pair of twins in a crib and I called my son over and I was like, surely this isn't real. Like it was, know, that the dog had like put the babies to bed or something and he immediately pointed out to me that like some of the buttons on the baby's jumpsuit like went up onto its neck and that the dog's head is definitely too wide to go through the railing. So of course it's an AI and he was just like, Mum, like how could you not see this? I'm not primed to think that pictures that I see in my social media feed are just AI slop. Like I'm old enough that that's not something that I've grown up expecting. I was pleased to see that my son is sceptical enough that he spotted it immediately, but it's just not our orientation to information that's incoming to immediately think that it's just fake. But unfortunately a lot of it is now.

David (38:48)

Look, I for one will not be voting for the “Dogs as Nannies” bill. Anyone who knows my opinions on these things will attest to that. When it comes to democracy, though, what are the information that can manipulate the way our democracy works?

Saffron (39:02)

I mean, all kinds of things like it's, it's such a flexible tool, isn't it? Like a scare campaign that is unrebuttable, that makes you think that a party is going to do a thing. You know, we've seen so many examples of that over the years in Australia, where a well-placed scare campaign has changed the outcome of an election. Smear campaigns about people. You know, there was some there were some stories about information that was being put up on polling booths that was made to look like official AEC communications that in fact was not. There is just so many ways that false information can be used to manipulate us and that's like one level of the problem but below that even I think when you start to get the disinformation like at the referendum I heard stories that people had started to show up to polling booths with a pen because they had heard that officials were rubbing out the pencil marks on the votes and so if you didn't use a pen the electoral officials might mess up your vote and that kind of disinformation that undermines the trust in the whole system is actually more of a worry in the long term than you know a scare campaign that changes the result of a single election even though obviously that's a problem too.

David sidenote (40:16)

Just a quick side note here, Saffron Zomer told me something after we were recording that's worth mentioning at this point. One key thing about democracy and the actions and decisions we the voters take are incredibly aligned with how we're doing financially. She says the experience of financial stress and the perception of economic inequality shape our relationship to democracy. Now this matters because social trust underpins any democratic system. You can't have a democracy without social trust. When researchers measure our sense of belonging, our trust in government, our perception of corruption, and our trust in our fellow citizens, all of these sentiments closely track how much financial stress and inequality we are experiencing. She also told me that when populations experience severe financial stress and they don't feel that political elites are acting, they're more likely to vote for populist or self-styled “strongman” candidates, or even leaders who can then use the democratic infrastructure of elections to seize power for non-democratic agendas. Sound familiar? She says the ADN can currently see this kind of political dynamic taking shape in Australia. And so we need to act on the underlying problems urgently.

David (41:29)

Saffron Zomer is our guest on “Where Are We At With…?”, we are looking at democracy. She founded an organization known as the Australian Democracy Network. Not to be confused with the Australian Disability Network, they do good work too. Well, let's talk about this because we talk about disinformation and it's easy to be amused by the idea of the dog nannying the children or the idea of misleading somebody about a pen versus pencil and you have to bring your own. Because what matters behind that is who might stand to benefit therefore. Who is doing this. And that leads to one of the most scary things I felt from reading through some of the research that's been done in this area, corporate interests. Who were the people? Who were the organizations, not people, sorry, what are some of the areas and fields that could be behind those sorts of tactics, even if they haven't yet happened?

Saffron (42:05)

Yeah. Well, yeah, it's a little hard to say because... 

David (42:21)

And I'm sorry, I'm not asking you to say,  it's this particular company or this, I guess, what are these shadowy Chinese businessman trying to do something or is this actual just corporate money?

Saffron (42:32)

Have you ever come across the concept of the polluter’s paradox? Maybe not. So if you're unfamiliar, this is the idea that if you run a business or an industry and your profit relies on selling a harmful product then naturally a good government will regulate you, right? If your product is cigarettes or gambling, for example, any good government might think that regulations would be required to protect the public interest. So those are the industries that are the most incentivised to influence government because otherwise they're to be regulated. And so if you look at lobbying, political donations, attendance at cash for access dinners, public relations campaigns and influencing elections, you will generally see the biggest spends and the most investment from the dirtiest industries. And this is why that corporate influence is such a concern because actually it sways heavily to the least desirable interests. And if you think about why it makes a lot of sense, but the outcomes tend to be anti-public interest because of that kind of foundational paradox. And that's why it's really important to limit that influence.

David (43:37)

Okay, so therein is the polluter’s paradox, the idea being that the ones who are most likely to cause the problems are the ones with the loudest voice and therefore causing the squeakiest wheels. Let's talk then about how this works. You mentioned a few of those places where perhaps politicians or decision makers can be influenced. A lot of us tend to imagine corporate influence being both illegal and underhand. I'm buying you a house as long as you do this, or I'll just give you a big wad of cash in a paper envelope if you do it this way. We think of it as old fashioned, almost police corruption style. How are the influencers having their say in modern politics?

Saffron (44:20)

Yeah, so it's a combination of tactics and sometimes there are bags full of money involved, but as you say, generally not. So we call this kind of conglomeration of tactics state capture, which is when a powerful interest is able to exert so much influence over the decision making process that they can get outcomes that put their profits or private interests ahead of the public interest or the benefits of everybody else. And generally, state capture is exercised through a range of different tactics. So those will include lobbying, so direct contact with decision makers. Cash for access is the term that we use for fancy fundraising dinners where you pay a lot of money to sit down next to a minister for dinner and tell them what you think. Donations to political campaigns and also like the threat of public relations campaigns against you during elections and all of these things are legal. So there's no reason to break the law to achieve this kind of influence. I think the thing to understand is that it's very rarely like I'll buy a policy for $100,000. It's actually that the money facilitates this long series of engagements that creates relationships of influence that are incredibly powerful over time.

David sidenote (45:36)

Another quick side note here, this sort of donations for better access to ministers or policymakers is part of the system in many countries. As we release this episode, there are even a few examples in the media and from many different sides of politics. The ABC, for instance, reports that a property developer recently donated $50,000 to have lunch with Queensland's deputy premier. Now all of this is perfectly legal. The developer says the donation is meaningless and it won't affect any future decisions. So that's a relief.

Saffron (46:08)

The other factor that is at play at the same time before the revolving door, which is that people will move from industry into politics and back into industry so that it's really not uncommon to have a minister leave his role regulating an industry and then go take up a job lobbying for that industry in a kind of, know, insultingly short timeframe. So taken all together, those things can result in a really unhealthy level of influence.

David (46:40)

The complexity around this state capture idea is incredible. And obviously we could spend several hours just picking through it alone. Let's pick up some of the highlights though. We talked about donations there because political donations are important. They help fund those political parties do what they want to do. But we often see the same companies donating very similar amounts to both major parties. Why is that?

Saffron (47:03)

Well, actually a core feature of state capture is that it's bipartisan. So any sensible company is going to have a bet each way. So they don't really need to worry about the outcome of the election. They can still have the influence that they need to have.

David (47:16)

You don't put all your money on Beetle Bomb, you make sure that you've got every horse in the race covered, in other words. Donations in Australia, many of them have to be reported. Obviously, there are some that aren't. How does that system cause problems when it comes to donation laws and transparency?

Saffron (47:33)

Well, first of all, even at the present time, the donations that are reported are reported with a 12 month lag time and they're reported in this hideous data dump that you basically need to be an actuary to understand. The data is very dirty. Folks who analyse the data will spend days and days cleaning up the data set so they can actually analyse it properly, functionally for your average lay person, we do not have really any meaningful transparency over political donations in this country. And the donations, which as you say, are legally required to be disclosed are a very small proportion of the overall amount that goes into politics. We call that undisclosed amount dark money and essentially, you know, some kind of other receipts. So that's a huge problem because if you think about who is giving this money, they're generally entities that are for profit, all of the spending decisions that they make are about returning profit to their investors or to themselves. It just doesn't make sense that they give away hundreds of thousands of dollars with the expectation of nothing in return. Like as we said, it's not that they expect a particular piece of legislation is going to be written up for them in return for a certain sum, but, on the other hand, it's demonstrable that donations do peak around election times or around the, you know, you can even track donations that have followed particular project approvals, donations that have followed particular legislative decisions. So it's very hard to say that these people and entities aren't getting anything for their money and the public really deserves to know who is giving money to whom. I think they should not be able to give unregulated amounts of money at all but as they are giving money it should most 100 % be transparent.

David (49:27)

One of the things reading the reports available on the Australian Democracy Network's website that struck me most, and I certainly have repeated it to friends, is the idea of the correlation between donations and fundraising and electoral success. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

Saffron (49:43)

Yeah, well, I mean, there are outliers, of course, but there are many elections where you could solidly predict the outcome based on who received the most donations, which is very concerning. There are plenty of cases where donations don't buy an outcome. So, for example, in 2025, the biggest donor actually overall in that election was Mineralogy, which is Clive Palmer's outfit. He mostly gave the money to his party, his own party, the Trumpet of Patriots, as we know they weren't wildly successful. It's not an automatic thing. But the trend is that to be successful electorally, you need to be successful as a fundraiser. And I think the problem with having an uncapped system is that it creates an arms race. So if you can spend unlimited amounts of money, there is never going to be an end to your need to fundraise more because the other guys are fundraising more. And that just means that you've going to start looking for worse and worse, worse money because you run out of all the legitimate sources and you're in an arms race so you have to keep going and kind of think of people like Sam Dastyari, like that's the kind of story that you see resulting from this system.

David (50:54)

We also see a system where each of the major political organisations in Australia, and obviously we ultimately have two main ones at the moment with others playing their role at different times, but they're supported in a sense by smaller organisations beneath them and I suppose affiliate organisations. What can you tell me about that when it comes to donations and giving money to groups that support those political leanings?

Saffron (51:19)

Yeah, I mean, this was the crux of why the Victorian electoral laws just got struck down by the court, which is that they had made an exemption for their nominated entities, which is essentially a fundraising loophole so that you've got a place where you can funnel money. It's also the PAC system in the US operates a little bit this way so that you can kind of have a proxy that can take money on your behalf. And that's why third parties need regulation when you regulate money in politics to avoid this kind of proxy situation from taking hold. 

David (51:52)

Where is the money spent? Is it just on advertising? What other ways can they be using it? 

Saffron (51:57)

Advertising is the lion's share and that's why I think caps on election donations and election spending can only be a good thing because it means that you all have to listen to less ads in daily news consumption. That is a big part of it. There are other costs of course, know, staff, travel, all these kinds of things, but advertising materials are the really big ticket item and TV, as you know, just costs insane amounts of money to run repeated spots on national TV.

David (52:26)

we've mentioned social media, we've mentioned AI, can that money be used then effectively as underhand and dark influencing expenditure versus publicly transparent advertising with authorized by me at the end of it?

Saffron (52:39)

Yeah, I think we're only just beginning to understand what AI might mean in this space, but worth noting that like at the most basic level, federally, we don't even have truth in political advertising laws. So, you know, we have a long way to go in terms of making sure that our elections are cleaned up.

David (52:56)

I don't want to get bogged down in the United States. You did work there. We've mentioned the PAC system in America. How does the fundraising work differently in the United States to Australia?

Saffron (53:05)

Well, I was never like inside a political party or privy to that really. think I would say I just think they're in some ways further down that path than we are, but the similarities are really concerning. So if you find it a worry what you see playing out in the US, then it's a good time for us to make sure that we're looking at our foundational system so that we don't go the same way.

David (53:30)

Now you're the CEO of the Australian Democracy Network. That is in itself a lobby group. Tell me a little bit about lobbying in the way that it can work. You mentioned maybe getting on the phone and calling a particular minister or decision maker, but there are official inquiries into things and submissions are made. Tell me how that process works.

Saffron (53:47)

Well, lobbying can look many different ways. mean, if you have the resources, you can do your lobbying at the tennis or, you know, on your private jet. There's certainly quite a bit of that.

David (53:58)

That's when I usually do it to be fair. It's a little bit quieter that way.

Saffron (54:01)

Indeed, and more comfortable. So for those of us without those resources, it generally is, you know, go through the front door, ask for a meeting, go and sit down with a member of parliament, explain your perspective to them. And I think it's worth saying that I actually don't think that lobbying is an anti-democratic activity. Quite the contrary. Like, lobbying is a really important way that MPs can educate themselves about issues and make sure that they're hearing from different stakeholders who might hold different perspectives. The issue is that at the federal level lobbying is not transparent so we don't get to see our ministerial diaries, we don't know who's talking to who and there are so many obstacles to community groups and organisations actually getting time with decision makers that we know that it is almost certain that if we got to see those ministerial diaries we would see a real lack of balance in terms of who is getting into our decision makers ears. So I don't think it's the activity itself that is problematic whether it's appearing before an acquirer or sitting down with the minister directly. I think it's the transparency and the balance that we need to fix.

David (55:11)

What are the requirements at the moment? What is happening and how would you like to see that change then?

Saffron (55:17)

Well, we normally have a lobbyist register, but it's basically useless. It doesn't capture most lobbyists and there's no real penalty if you misbehave. You could get taken off the register and continue lobbying, get hit with a lettuce leaf. There's also the orange passes which are getting a little bit more airplay. So if you want to get access to Parliament House, you need a sponsored pass. I have one of those. I just don't actually think that's the biggest part of the problem. You know, the really effective lobbying isn't happening with people who have an orange pass going up to Parliament House. So how would I like to see it change? I would like to see open ministerial diaries with appropriate exceptions so that we know who's meeting who and influencing them in something close to real time. We'd like to see a proper lobbyist register that also captures in-house lobbyists, so not just professional lobbyists for hire. And we would like to an end to the revolving door. So it's really not appropriate to have someone who's been regulating an industry leave their job and 10 minutes later show up as a lobbyist for that industry. That's an exaggeration, but the rules at the moment are nowhere near robust enough.

David (56:30)

We know that there are laws around this and yet there seems to be constant former MPs, ministers or whatever it might be turning up in these areas, Christopher Pyne and submarines, Anna Bligh and banks, all sorts from all sides. At the same time, I suppose people from organisations are then joining the political circuit. There's always going to be that crossover, isn't there?

Saffron (56:51)

Yeah, I think a degree of crossover, you're right, is probably inevitable, but you could have a much more sensible and robust cooling off period. And I think that at the sub-ministerial level, like people probably aren't aware of the way that there's also that revolving door working at the level of industry and the public service. And if you let that become too entrenched, then you wind up actually in a situation where industry doesn't have to pick up the phone ask for what they want because the Public Service and the Minister's Office already know 

David (57:22)

I was staggered to read in some of the ADN's material there that in fact in many cases we have industry employees effectively embedded in or doing work experience with some of these government departments. They're already inside the building as it were.

Saffron (57:35)

Correct. And oftentimes actually writing the legislation that regulates their own industries significantly. So yeah, really like the system is not doing what it says on the box in really significant ways. And what that means, I think, is that, you know, when people survey Australians, more than half of us say that we don't think that government works for us. It works for some big corporations, that we have a hard time naming but we don't think it works for people like us. You can't have a democracy without the foundation of social trust and trust in institutions and people may not understand the intricacies of how state capture works but we're not stupid we can see it in the outcomes that our government is producing for us and it undermines our trust in democracy as a concept which is really troubling on a much deeper level than any particular decision that goes the wrong way.

David (58:32)

We can see it when a COVID inquiry comes out with let's build better gas lines or perhaps the taxation on gas companies, as we're seeing at the moment becomes in the question of what is actually being done appropriately. It's distressing, disturbing. I'll admit I was actually relatively disheartened looking into all of this. Can you get more freedoms or as has been written by some cynics, are freedoms purely rights that haven't been taken away yet by government?

Saffron (59:01)

That's a very cynical view. And I think the thing to remember is that democracy is a system that's created by people. And so people can always change it. Like none of this is preordained. It's not, you know, a physical system of the laws of nature that we can't influence. It's just a social system. And so if we're not happy with the way it's working, let's change it.

David (59:24)

have seen written that along that concept, the idea that you don't ever get more freedoms or rights, you only ever have them taken away. Friends pointed out that that's not the case, as we've discussed right at the beginning, the suffragette movements, civil liberties when it comes to the fact that the First Nations people are allowed to actually have a say in the running of this country, gay marriage, various things like that. It is possible to get some freedoms or at least improve freedoms or get them back again. Do you feel like we're going one way or the other, getting more, losing more?

Saffron (59:54)

And if you take the global perspective on the numbers, democracies in retreat overall. So globally, 7 % of our population live in a country that qualifies as full democracy, compared to 74 % of us that live under an autocratic regime. yeah, that that's less full democracies in the world and less people living in democracies than 25 years ago, for example. So at a meta level, I would say we're going the wrong way. And the headwind headwinds are very strong and when I say headwinds I mean like these global forces like conflict, economic stress, the impact of climate catastrophe and environmental disasters and how that shows up in human societies, the collapse of traditional media, the rise of disinformation and AI and none of these headwinds stops at our doorstep of course. So that's very troubling but I guess the fact is that at the moment Australia has managed to really swim against that tide. We're a bit of an outlier. So recent analysis ranked us 12th actually in terms of the strength of our democracy overall, 12th in the world. So that's a pretty great place to be. And at the last election there were some pretty Trumpy politics and policies on offer and we didn't choose that path. We chose a different way. So I think at the moment we have a real like a period of grace you could say in which we don't have to fight those desperate rearguard actions to defend the very basics of our democracy and instead we are in a moment where we could really be thinking about what our democracy needs to be strong and resilient enough to get through whatever is

David (1:01:33)

Okay, the big question, particularly given what we've been through and given the fact that we've talked about how many people are a little bit disheartened or cynical about the process. Where are we at with democracy right now? Are we in a good place or in a bad place?

Clip from “The Good Place” NBC

You’re in the Good Place. It’s ok Eleanor, you’re in the good place. Hold on a minute, holy smokes. This is the bad place. 

Saffron (1:02:03)

I think both. I think we're in a difficult place and we're in a place that is very challenging. But I am fond of the concept of a crisis trinity. I think often when things are dark and difficult is when really you'll see the most creative, imaginative responses from people. And democracy has never been handed to anyone on a plate. It's something that has been fought for by people who wanted to have a say in their own lives and govern themselves. in that sense, I would say we're in a good place and we're lucky in Australia. We have a lot of protective factors, the foundations of our democracy. We have great institutions, we have a great electoral system, we vote in incredibly high numbers compared to almost anywhere in the world. So we have a lot to work with. And I think the key thing is really like, let's not let this be a problem that we leave to our elected leaders to solve. It's something that everybody can play a part in.

David (1:03:02)

You're not going to make a change if you sit on the couch and say, well, it's all ruined. There's no point in me taking part. What should people be doing? How can they make sure that democracy endures and that their voice continues to be heard?

Saffron (1:03:13)

Well, I think this is the best part of it because democracy is meant to be a system that's created by many hands, right? Like it's more like a tapestry than a single thread. I like this analogy. So if you think of democracy as a tug of war, so on one side you've got special interests that are trying to pull the system in their own direction for their profit so that they can become billionaires even more than they are now. And over the last couple of decades, the people on that side of the rope or the organisations there have become incredibly strong, they're very effective, they're pulling on that rope like anything and they're pulling the whole system out of balance towards their side. On the other side you have the public interest which is just regular people and the organisations that we build in our communities and over the last few decades, membership of civil society organisations has generally fallen so membership of churches and faith-based organisations has fallen, membership of unions has fallen, volunteering rates have fallen, members of advocacy organisations like Australian Democracy Network are lower than they have been. And so that's essentially like a lot of us have taken our hands off the rope. We're not pulling in the direction of the public interest and the interests of people on planet. So the beautiful thing about this is any way that you choose to re-engage in public life is democracy building. And I think people don't always accept this in the way that I mean it because they're like, well, you know, being part of the parents and carers association at school or whatever I do, like it's not really democracy. So can I tell you one more story? Cause I really do believe this is true. And the democracy building that we do in the spaces that we're in is just as important as going to vote and eating that democracy sausage and deciding who is going to represent you up there. So this is a story about a cricket club and they have a lovely cricket pitch somewhere in inner city Melbourne. And because there isn't much green space in this area, it's a very treasured community asset. People go do their Tai Chi there, they walk their dogs, they run there and they use the ground to play cricket. So the council has a proposal to redevelop the cricket club and it's not a good proposal. They're going to lose a lot of tree canopy, the footprint of the buildings is too big, people don't like it. So the people in the cricket club have meetings, they make a plan, they get a petition up, they put some ads in the local paper, they go to council meetings, they advocate for a change and the council withdraws the plan and comes back with something that's acceptable to the community. And the point of this story is that all the people who walk their dogs in that park or take their kids there to play after school. They also hated the plan, but because they weren't supported by the structure of a community organization, they felt powerless. They didn't really feel like there was any avenue for them to say something about this decision that was going to have such a big impact on their daily life and make it worse. So yeah, you don't think of being part of the cricket club as democracy work, but it is. And that is the infrastructure that means that we can actually meaningfully participate in in these decisions that shape our lives every day. So whatever it is for you, if it's the cricket club or parents and carers or delivering some meals on wheels, it's all democracy building and it actually is so enriching and wonderful in every other way. These big corporate entities, they want us lonely, they want us disconnected, they want us spending our money online and sitting scrolling endlessly on their platforms. Let's not do that.

David (1:06:48)

It's the democracy we meet along the way that makes all the difference. Thank you so much for your time today.

Saffron (1:06:53)

You're so welcome.

David (1:06:59)

Thanks again to Saffron Zomer at the Australian Democracy Network, as well as their communications advisor Peter Lloyd for their help with this episode. We have some links to some of their investigations as well as their recommendations on our website. That's wawawpod.com, Yes, www.wawawpod.com You can also check out the transcript of this episode and more of our interviews. Also, finally, if any, property developers, unions, mining groups or environmental lobby groups wish to make meaningless donations to us, we will be sure to not let them influence us either. Thanks for listening. Goodbye.