Our friends at The Workshop in New Zealand have created this guide to talking about government and its work for the public good. We recommend it for all advocates, policy-makers, journalists and others who communicate on these issues!

We’ve come through a transformative election, into a new dawn of possibility. Australia’s Parliament not only has a new government and Prime Minister, but an unusual crossbench configuration eager to fight for climate, integrity and democracy. To make it happen, record numbers of people volunteered like never before, ran for office like never before, and shifted their voting habits like never before….

I’ve spent the better part of two decades working in activism and communications, and prior to COVID-19, the hardest part of my job was trying to convince people that things really could be different. Read Lily Spencer’s article in Dumbo Feather magazine

As reMAKERs we talk about changing systems, not just treating symptoms.

What do we mean by that? What does anyone mean when they talk about making systemic change, and how is it different from other forms of change?

We live in a time of crisis and transition.
The first warrants attention, the second ambition.
We can’t stop the work of resistance, but can we work on both fronts simultaneously?

Transformation is already here. No longer are we fighting to convince people that an alternative to business as usual is possible. We’ve already shown we can change everything. Suddenly it’s a race to determine what the post-pandemic world looks like

We will come out of this pandemic a different country – the question is how different and who decides.

Are we in a hiatus that returns us to business-as-usual or is this a pivot point to something better?

As we build this work we’ll be asking how do we reclaim the public good? Where is this happening across the world? And what do ordinary Australians think about it?

We’re at a crazy time. We’ve been talking to activists and leaders around the country. We’re excited. We’re tired. We’re overwhelmed by the possibility of a great re-set and reMAKE and worried we’ll screw it up.

Of course, there never really was anything inevitable about how neoliberal ideas rose to power. It was the result of deliberate, long-term, coordinated planning, strategy and funding. One little-known example, the Powell Memo, illustrates this perfectly.

At Australia reMADE, we exist to promote the vision of the country we’re aiming for, and the systems change needed to create it. Doing this, for us, has two parts: unravelling (understanding how we got what we currently have) and reMAKING (being clear on what we want instead, and then joining the dots to change systems).