Citizen Stu
Dr Mumbo was greatly intrigued by an email that lobbed into his inbox from Stuart Gregor, the founder of PR agency Liquid Ideas and chairman of the PR Council.
Gregor, with the help of a few advertising industry people, is setting up a political party ahead of the September federal election.
In the email sent out to a number of people across the industry he explains that the party, which is to be called the23million (based on Australia’s population hitting the 23 million mark this week), is an attempt to “agitate for a bit of change in our political system”.
Agitation you say? This is a topic Dr Mumbo thinks the chairman of the Public Relations Council knows a bit about.
He goes on to explain:
“A few interested people and I, including many much smarter and learned you will be relieved to know, have for a while been discussing ways we could make Australian democracy just a bit better.
“Ways we can make our government more representative of the people, not the party; make policy around the best for all of us 23 million, not for vested interests, marginal seat voters or political parties.
“We have a good looking website that has gone live today and most of what we are up to is explained there.”
Indeed, Dr Mumbo was impressed by the website for this new political party and the fact that Gregor has also enlisted other industry people including: Matt Jones, former global head of strategy at Jack Morton NYC, Nick Richardson head of ideas at Naked Communications and Andy Pilkington former ECD at Moon Communications. You can see the full list of who is involved here.
Gregor says their aim is to get 500 people to sign up so they can register the political party by May 11. From there they will take a run at a Senate seat.
But don’t think for one moment that Gregor is putting himself forward (surely he already has enough on his plate). As the email explains: “We, the organisers, will not be the candidates, you the members will help choose the candidates – it could even be you, and we hope you might even vote for them…”
“We simply want a review of how politics is undertaken in Australia and we reckon this is a great way to start. We want to see whether it can be done better; a little more “of the people, by the people, for the people” – and with better manners.”
topics
Stuart Gregor
because there’s a PR man behind this, one has to ask, what’s it REALLY all about?
User ID not verified.
Interesting to see that in order to join you cannot be a member of any other political party, yet they want politics and government not to be all about the party.
User ID not verified.
@hokey frost
That’s a really valid question, and one I hope we’ve got a good answer for. The early momentum has come from PR/advertising/creative folks, no question. But we’ve already got academics like John Dryzek of ANU advising us, and leaders from other industries supporting us, including Catherine Baldwin of Bangarra Dance Theatre and Chris Selby from Deutsche Bank. Ultimately I think the impetus has come from our industry because we (hopefully) see the potential for new ways of communicating and engaging to change how politics works in Australia. But it’s not about us, and it’s not about any policy agenda (because we don’t have any). It’s purely about asking for an open review of the political system we have, in search of ways to give ourselves a better one.
@JG
Yep, that’s annoying, I agree. The last thing the world needs is another political party. And yet in order to secure a voice on the inside of government, we felt we needed to stand for the senate race. And in order to stand for the senate race, we have to get approved by the AEC. And in order to get approved by the AEC we need to have 500 members who (to use their words) are not relied on by any other party. So we agree with you…this whole ‘party’ membership thing is a pain. And ultimately we want to create a big tent movement that is open to anyone who wants to participate. But it’s necessary for now if we’re to satisfy the AEC and press for the review we believe is required to get our system back on track.
User ID not verified.
Thank you for the explanation Matt. So if I cross my fingers when I join that’ll be OK.
User ID not verified.