The new Senate is our focus in this iteration of a new feature on our website – Project Democracy. That’s nice because, on the organisation’s third birthday, this returns GetUp! to our initial emphasis on making the Senate a genuine house of review. (We’ll bring the Reps on-stream later). PD brings a new emphasis on offering tools for political engagement alongside GetUp’s established practice of campaigning on issues that matter to Australians. We hope it will make our representatives less remote from all of us – we all know that Senators can sometimes appear slightly detached from their State-wide contituencies.
The site will include a number of tools that we hope will break down some of the barriers in Australian political life – between citizens, and between communities and their representatives. PD rolls together a number of features that might be familiar from other places. But by putting them together, we hope we’ll be more of a “one-stop shop” for citizen engagement with the parliament, and building local activist networks.
Some of the things on the site at launch include -
- Hansard-derived information on the parliamentary performance of Senators. (Powered by technology developed by the wonderful folk at OpenAustralia, and ultimately derived from the innovations at TheyWorkForYou.Com)
- Targeted news services, offering specific streams of information on individual Senators, states and local communities.
- Interactive maps of the Senate chamber, and the country.
- Space for user-generated content: we’re offering people the opportunity to blog on issues of interest, to monitor the performances of Senators, and to build localised campaigns on the issues that matter to them. We’re calling this section our “action blogs”.
We’re doing all this not to compete with the existing political blogosphere, or other Edemocracy initiatives. We think there’s a long way to go with online activism and democratic participation.
Rather, we want to contribute to the growth of alternative modes of political engagement, and alternative presentations of political information and participation. That’s because we recognise that existing media and parliamentary reporting, despite the best intentions, can often make the workings of our democratic institutions more, rather than less remote.
Have a look at the site. Our first theme on the action blogs is “Why I’ll be watching the Senate”, but you can contribute on any political topic you like, really, by going to our submission page. Oh and check out the best toy so far on the site, the interactive Senate map.
Let us know what you think – we’ve clearly marked it as being in a “beta” state, and we’d welcome any feedback. We’re planning a lot more features, and of course, the Reps is yet to come!
My post for PD was originally called “Keeping the bastards honest”. With Steve Fielding planning to vote against the luxury cars tax, the bastards are not only the major parties. Yesterday he would not tell an interviewer what his bottom-line was for supporting some form of tax. So much for transparency. More backroom deals and bartering no doubt.
The links (in above post) for OpenAustralia and TheyWorkForYou.Com are
misdirecteda bit oops, they are of course theyworkforyou.com and OpenAustralia .I’m going to be watching Mark Furner (ALP-Qld). He’s new.
Writing in Crikey yesterday, Richard Farmer was unimpressed by Mark Furner’s maiden speech. I can’t help thinking the Senate would have been a better place if Larissa Waters or Andrew Bartlett had won the seat instead of him.
This was Farmer’s take on Furner:
“Senator Mark Furner, Labor Queensland. He might have held paid positions in three trade unions but the new Senator Furner but he worked in the transport industry for 12 years before being elected to the first of them. After stints as an organiser with the Transport Workers Union and an industrial officer with the Queensland Police Union (his father had been a policeman, his mother a nurse), he became first an organizer and then branch secretary of the National Union of Workers. His was a maiden speech without much flair, just the predictable thank you to family and friends and those who helped him along the way in the trade union movement and the Labor Party. Senator Furner is unlikely to be one of the intellectual heavyweights of the Parliament.
4 out of 10.”
Get Up is a gyp. It was promoted as a grass roots thing and when i plugged in I found the agenda was a. Not subject to the influence of the grass roots, b. very convenient to the ALP.
.
Bollocks.
>> “4 out of 10″…
It’s frightening just how ordinary, mostly, they, our elected representatives, are, compared to how extraordinary the problems they, on our behalf, have to deal with.
Especially the Senate – what can we expect when positions on party tickets are more about party faction machinations, or dynastics, rather than actual talent, toil, or even sincerity?
What was it PJK used to say about unrepresentative swill?
Mind you, coming from Quinceland, with no upper state house, I’m painfully aware that any senate is probably better than none, at least things get reviewed and challenged a bit, not just railroaded.
Derek, you’re very right. If what Farmer has said is true and Furner doens’t lift his act, I’ve got about five years to convince everyone to vote for the Greens (and any other minor non-conservative party/candidate which stands a chance of being elected to the Senate) over the ALP in the second next election so that Furner gets replaced. That is, of course, if the top two don’t step down.
>>”Get Up is a gyp …. very convenient to the ALP”
Strategy I think it’s called Adrien … I mean, who was the original GetUp staffer, working , like a true carnie , those early
heliotropepurple prose campaign blogs, getting the punters in eg the ones that sought to enflame the Cronulla riot situation : !!Beachside Bullies in the Shire!! ?Lockie F. Harris, now safely ensconced as Kevvie’s office Heavy.
Who was on the GetUp board, and most likely bankrolling it, and who later got to polish the leather of a thought-to-be-safe Victorian upper house seat? Evan Thornley. Bill Shorten was also on the board.
GetUp’s sympathies could hardly be described as concealed, Andrew Robb made sure everyone knew it from the word go: ‘It’s a front for the Labor Party, it’s a political front. They’re quite entitled to do it, it’s a free country, but it’s a political front’.
Like I say, it was a plan, a strategy, a classic one at that, the way it crossed the fourth estate with a fifth column. And the way they conned the green vote by putting one on the board was pretty schmick, you gotta give em that. That and playing John Hewson for a mug, by getting him on board too, brilliant. Cynical, and disgusting, but brilliant.
I’ll leave SuperLuvvie Lockie with the last word, (No, more’s the pity, he’s not talking , like a latterday Latham, about our parliamantary Labor Party ):
“These thugs (aren’t) defending anything, they (aren’t) righting any wrongs….They (are) simply doing what every single bully has always done. They (are) exploiting the fortuitous existence of numerical supremacy, for the very simple reason that they can. So I am not going to buy into the finger pointing and name calling, the blame game or culture wars. Because ..(it’s)… about bullies. Bullies intoxicated by beer and brotherhood, fruitlessly searching for meaning in meaningless acts of brutality”
Cue the NSW cabinet re-shuffle.
Hi all,
Thanks for the (largely) positive comments on the new site. It’s essentially a non-partisan effort – it’s about making stuff that’s already on the public record more accessible, and giving people a platform to talk about their Senators and the issues that matter.
To respond to danny – the only people “bankrolling” GetUp! are those kind members who donate to our campaigns. No one at GetUp! is a member of a political party. We are not connected with the Labor Party, and we have criticised or pressured the Rudd government in a number of campaigns now.
I doubt that you’re ready to be convinced about this, and suspect you have a disposition to be critical of whatever I might say, but I thought I should get it on the record.
Cheers
Jason
Jason -
Sorry to differ with you but I do. The claim that no-one is a member of a political party may be true but I didn’t find there was anything by way of a platform. Instead I received regular emails telling me what issues I should be concerned about and what I should think about them with an invitation to sign a bloody petition.
>>Jason: ” ..I suspect you have a disposition to be critical of whatever I might say”….You suspect too much, methinks.
I hope you didn’t interpret my correction of the links, from before you or someone fixed ‘em, as snark, i tried to indicate so with a jocular “oops”.
In actually think opendemocracy’s functionality could be the best thing to happen to democracy since the secret ballot. On the link I put up, I tried to show just how easy it is to use OA to find something useful and important:
If you had followed it and read what is exposed there, (but is pretty much otherwise unreported except in the trade) you’d have seen that:
From that I’ve talked to the senator’s office, who has sent me something on paper to take to the doctor and dentist, and I’m away. And I have you to thank. Thanks.
I actually find it a bit of a worry that “No-one at Get-Up is a member of a political party”. Does that mean you’re not allowed to?
Cheers.