A Democracy of Doing
Jon found himself in Perth, Western Australia, with the team from the DoingCo. This social enterprise supports a growing movement of “town teams” across the country and beyond: local doers coming together to shape their places, their way. This is a joyful, powerful movement - as you’ll hear from nightclub-promoter-turned-community-organiser Jimmy Murphy, and all-round citizen powerhouse Kendell Terrell.
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Transcript
Welcome to How to Save Democracy. I'm John, and I seem to spend a lot of my time at the moment in airports. I'm traveling all over the world partly to find the people who are doing the real work and find their stories and hear them, and partly to then go and tell them on as many platforms as I can. That can make it hard for us to get together and actually record the episodes to share them with all of you. But we have just managed to do that, and there'll be loads more coming soon. I'm off on my travels again. But before I go, I wanted to share one episode with you as soon as possible. I was recently in Australia, and one of the groups I met there was an organization called The Doing Co. They support people to come together in town teams all across the country. They call themselves a movement of local doers, and they're all about championing a democracy as something we do, not something we have. You're about to meet nightclub promoter turned community organizer, Jimmy Murphy, and all around citizen powerhouse, Kendall Turrell. They're gonna tell you the story in their own words. Welcome to How to Save Democracy in Perth. Yeah. So, yeah. Let's start with what Town Team Movement is. Kendall.
Thanks, John. Yeah. So Town Team Movement is an underwriting, nonprofit social enterprise, that has formed and continues to exist to enable active citizenship. So we've been around since 2018, but now there is over a 180 active town teams. Globally, there's only a couple, international, majority, however, is here in sunny Western Australia. So we have over a 150 active town teams here and over 50% of them, interestingly,
are in regional Western Australia. Alright. Good. And can you give me a couple of your favourite examples? May maybe span your scale of doing with a few examples.
Sure. So, I guess the journey into active citizenship is what we're really sort of focused on, and we appreciate, that not everyone's going to be ready to formalize, their doing, in jumping into a town team straight away. So we have a scale of doing, and we really encourage people to do low cost, no cost ideas that give them permission to act locally and really shift mindsets. That's our biggest challenge going from a passive consumer mindset to an active citizenship mindset is that permission to act. So we have, a wonderful resource called fifty quick wins, which is full of these low cost to no cost ideas, you know, as simple as drawing a hot hopscotch on the footpath, you know, making over your letterbox or, you know, doing some gorilla planting locally, things like that. And once people get a taste for that and then they go back to that place where they have contributed, it actually inspires them and motivates them often to do more. And as they're doing more, they're building relationships more broadly. And out of that, what typically starts to happen is, the groups can remain informal, but they start to formalize in a way that they mature in their doing. And some of those choose to become a town team. So a town team is a group of residents and business owners that gather together over the notion of place. So, you know, we've got your sporting clubs and your special interest groups. The reason that people gather, in terms of a town team is to make their place better. And so they can be unincorporated or incorporated, and, yeah, we work with them to help them get money, help remove barriers, and help deliver projects locally. And give me, give me a couple of examples.
Bring it to life for me. Sure. So,
a wonderful example actually is one that we visited yesterday, didn't we, John? Is the Vic Park Collective shed. So that, the Vic Park Collective town team are incredible. They've been around for a while, so definitely more mature in terms of their doing. But they purchased a sea container, and they were able to well, they took about five years, but they negotiated with the local government to put that in a public space. And then they fitted that out, with, shelving and equipment that was made available for their local community to borrow. So they have, a library of, lawnmowers and cooking equipment and outdoor theaters and all wonderful, activation and, helpful tools and stuff, that people can access. So it's $40 a year to have a membership to that, collective shed, and then you get your unlimited access so long as it as it's available. And that, was fully it's fully managed by volunteers. The all of the items were purchased new, which was all sort of fundraised and and donated money. So just a really incredible, example and a landmark now for them in place Yeah. That really centers
And I've been to see this thing. It's a beautiful bright yellow, shipping container and a lovely spot with, you know, enormous fig tree just beside it and a little bench outside. And and you can sense it was closed up when we were there for for because it was the wrong time of day. But but the you could sense that that is also a kind of a gathering spot. Right? Like, so these things, it's both the specific function, but also the general thing of of creating community space. There's one more I'm gonna prompt you to to share a little bit about just because hearing about it this morning from you guys blew my mind, which is the, GNP three sixty. So can you translate GNP three sixty for the universe?
So, GNP three sixty, big shout out to Cassie. That is a a cooperative that exists in a small regional town, in No Wangarup, in Western Regional Western Australia. They are a group that have formed, to transform the transform the small regional town through the acquisition of local assets. So, the story goes, and I might have a little bit of this wrong, but the story goes, that their local general store actually burnt down. And so that was, obviously, a center point and a gathering point and an important amenity, critical amenity in their local town, but no one was coming to save them, so they had to do something about it. And so they, purchased that, site and then worked with AtWork to rebuild it and, rectify it, and then they ended up selling that to, a supermarket, a locally led supermarket chain called IGA. And then they, retained that, money that was, through the sale of that, and then they've gone on to now, do other wonderful refurbishments in the town. They've purchased the old pub, and they're turning it into the community hub. And, yeah, they've just started to turn soil actually on the refurbishments of that, which is just, wildly incredible. And, yes, they've also, apparently just struck a deal to, to do an affordable, housing estate in Noangarup to attract more young families into their regional town centre, which is just, really trailblazing
in terms of local doing. So we go all the way from from from hopscotch on the on the path to to total transformation of a of a of a of a rural town. Absolutely. And this is, town teams of all shapes and sizes. Now let's go back to the kind of roots of this and and start to think about the underlying philosophy. So so what we're exploring in this podcast in how Save Democracy is this idea that, and Kendall's already started to drop in some of the language that very similar, the same language that you guys use. But we we talk about this idea that what we're stuck in at the moment is a is what we might call a consumer democracy, base of individual self interest. And what we're kind of exploring isn't really how you save that kind of democracy because we think it's screwed. But how you evolve it and deepen it into what you might call a citizen democracy, where actually people have the agency to shape what the options are, where they are where they're encouraged to be participants in in that society to contribute their ideas and energy and resources to shaping the world that they're part of and the communities that they're in rather than simply to choose between those options. And this is very much the kind of the underlying philosophy that the the urge that that that initiated town team movement in the first place as I understand it. At this point, I was hoping to edit in the recording of a conversation I had separately with John Kerry, who is now the labor minister for planning, lands, housing, and homelessness in the state government of Western Australia, who actually was also the original instigator of the town team movement. John's life moved towards politics began back in 2010 when he felt like Beaufort Street, his local high street, needed a boost of life. He brought together a group of people from across the community, from local residents to business owners, to form the Beaufort Street Network, and they then initiated the festival. Attendance at the festival grew from around 10,000 people in the first year to over 50,000 a few years on, and it became a real attractor, bringing life to the street and the community that lasted all year round. The Beaufort Street Network also, as we're about to hear from Jimmy, set the pattern for something that has since grown and spread far beyond. John and I talked much more, including about the challenges of taking this community orientation into formal politics. So we'll try to get him back on the podcast sometime soon. But for now, over to Jimmy. Jimmy Murphy. And so, Jimmy, you were one of one of the next people into this into this thing as it moved from being Beaufort Street Street Network to being Town Team Movement. Can you tell us a bit about that and about your sort of personal motivation for getting involved and where you were before?
Yeah. So, yeah. So John mentioned, yeah, he started the Beaufort Street Network, and then they did this incredible thing called the Beaufort Street Festival. And I was a nightclub promoter and event organizer in the neighboring town, which is called Leaderville. And we were watching what was happening in Beaufort Street, and we were like, wow. That is so cool. Like, we wanna do that in Leadable. So we started so the like, some of the, traders and residents, we started getting together and we were like, oh, we're gonna do our own street festival. And so we did our street festival. It's called Leadable Carnival. And I was, you know, because I was the event organizer and promoter, I was sort of the the guy with the skills in town who could deliver it. And I, you know, you know, as a lot of with these things, any person who's done this sort of doing citizen doing out there would know. You just sort of work it out as you go. And that whole approach was so incredible for me because it was, so emergent. Like, even because the way that, you know, the Beaufort Street Festival had been set up was it was really a showcase of the town and the culture and the people within that place. You know, you shut off the streets, all the businesses come out, you know, it's all local musicians, it's all local locally produced. It's just celebrating ourselves and having people inviting people in to see it. And so because it was so collaborative, there was just something about these events that were, like, just so authentic and attractive to people. And so, yeah, you know, John's festival went on to have a hundred thousand hours, went on to not quite get that many, but I think we had 60 or 70,000 at one year. And hilariously, at the same time, I had just had a child and I was having a bit of a crisis, myself because I was a nightclub promoter, sort of basically party boy kind of having a good time, you know, and sort of feeling like, what's I think there's something more to this life thing, you know. I guess having a child will always maybe help speed up that process. But, yeah. Fortunately, because I was a nightclub promoter and basically worked two nights a week and made a living out of it, I was spending I was able to spend two, three, four days a week basically just sitting on a rock and thinking, and I did that for about two years. And interesting, I feel like I just have gone the same journey you have gone, John, in terms of yeah. It was really sort of just picking it all apart, and I actually ended up with, you know, you know, I started with, well, why isn't anyone doing anything about climate change? Why and immediately you think, well, why isn't government doing anything about that? And then you're like, oh, hang on. Well, government why isn't government doing anything about that? Oh, because they're constrained. Why are they constrained? Oh, because we live in a culture of blame, because, they're risk averse, because, everything is lumped on their shoulders, so they're overwhelmed. And, yeah, this sort of basically consumer culture that we live in is what's actually holding us back, and destroying the planet at the same time as it's so wasteful and, you know, all of that obvious. Everyone knows that. So I was sort of like then my brain actually went, well, what's the opposite of consumption or its creation? And And then I was sort of went down this other rabbit hole, and I found this thing called creativism, which was actually a term, that Steve Jobs coined, which was basically kind of the ethos of the original ethos of Apple, which was essentially, you know, amplifying people to be able to create, you know, and, and that everything is and, you know, he was sort of famous for quotes like, you know, everything in the world, you have the power to create and change everything. Everything is creation, and you have the have the ability to change it. And it's the sort of misfits and weirdos who often do do that, you know, and changing. And so I sort of became obsessed with this idea of creativism, and then I was like, oh, and then I was really interested in the creative process because I was a musician as well. So I was sort of playing in bands and stuff. I could really relate to this idea, and then you're sort of linking it back to, well, you know, yeah. So this consumerism thing's really stuffing us up. If the antidote is creation, then we actually have to recreate the way that we live entirely, you know, and that's gonna take a lot of creative power. And then, but then I sort of but then, but then I was still sort of like going through this process and and at the same time doing these street festivals and and town teams started here in Perth. And then I was sort of like, hang on a minute. Like, I'd sort of had this penny drop moment where it was kind of like, hang on. This is this is actually This is the work. This is the work. I'm already doing the work, being in town teams and doing it at a local level and bringing people together and recreating mindsets. And, you know, it's like, oh, shit. And that's when it's like, oh, yeah. And this and then, you know, we've sort of evolved to be, yeah, citizen. It's this this this active being part of your local community, being part of And making changing and shaping your own neighborhoods. We've got an episode,
coming up very shortly where we had Brian Eno, as our guest talking about art and democracy and the attitude of the artist and being one where what you're doing is you're you're essentially kind of rehearsing possible futures. Like, you that's what art is. Like, it's a it's an it's an it's a creation of a of a possibility that you can experience briefly and decide whether you like it or not. He talks about. And and I think that in a way, that's what those festivals are at their best. They're they're they're expressions of and and rehearsals of and experiments in what a community could be. Yeah. But then so then this then town team started to form as a sort of organizational carriers of of these different ways of doing things, of of people
stepping into a role as creators and citizens rather than just consumers. Yeah. So it was like it's creative doing. So it's like so that's what we were that's what started happening was we were doing the festivals and everything. That was all really fun and empowering. And this kind of oh, well, what else can we do? Yeah. What other ideas have we got? You know? And it's like, oh, yeah. Let's do yarn bombing or, you know, oh, let's let's build a park bench and put it in the street. And, oh, no. Let's put a bathtub in the street and put it plants in it, you know, or, you know, like, crazy, wacky ideas. And then we were sort of getting away with it. And then at first yeah. You know, as John explained, at first, the council was really against it. But then but because it was all the stuff that we're doing was so popular, they had to sort of just change their tune, and then they sort of ended up joining in with us. And then we and then I was like and then, of course, I had my penny drop moment, and then I was like, now this is the work. How do we how do we, like, get how can we help more people do this have this amazing experience where they feel completely empowered to literally change the place where they live? And that was when we started Town Team Movement, which was, an under arching organization, not for profit organization that was basically dedicated to what Kendall was talking about in terms of reducing the barriers for people to be able to do this, creating a support network for them to feel supported in doing it, try and help them find funds, try and get local governments on board, and the system change work, which I know you're talking about, which is a massive piece. Because that was the other thing that was happening was that we were finding, yeah, for, you know, people who were starting to try and do this work in their own towns without any support, that would quickly get disenfranchised because it just all became too hard. Because if you, you know, you go excitedly to your local council and say, I wanna put a a fridge full of flowers on the sidewalk. Of course, they're gonna say no or whatever. You know? But, yeah. So we've had to sort of work out how to just get the balance between,
yeah, local government and community doing and yeah. Scott, I'll come to you, Kendall, on this because you've got a lovely way of, articulating this as a as an organization, as a movement now, this this thing about the the the virtuous cycles and the and the sort of vicious cycles we can get into. Can you just say a bit more about the vicious cycle and and the and then how you flip it? Yeah. Absolutely.
So, we, through, I guess, as the movements evolved and and all of our observations and learnings are really pointing to this idea that, you know, top down, government approaches, and passive consumer behaviors are mutually reinforcing. And so, you know, what's happened over time is participation in community life has been declining. And as that, participation has been declining, governments have had to do more. They've had to fill the gap. But as as they've started to fill the gap, they've started to corporatise community and layer in a whole bunch of of processes, and risk management and barriers essentially to to community participation. Because as they're doing more, they're, I guess, becoming personally accountable for the risk. But then in and then trying to deflect that risk back onto community through a bunch of paperwork and costly insurances that just make it too hard to do. So we need to interrupt that loop. We need to get that balance back. To make it really explicit. So you have you have
citizens doing less or or and government delivering more, but in delivering more, creating structures that make it more difficult for citizens to so citizens doing less, government doing more, citizens do less, government do more, and and but then you get to a point where government can't actually do it anymore. That's right. It's, you know, you ask any local government in Australia, you know, how, you know, how their budget is looking and how much they can afford to do, and it's never enough. Mhmm.
Because, you know, it's local government's not designed to fund community. Mhmm. It's, a different function, really. And so trying to, pay for community or deliver community as a service is very expensive.
There's a wonderful sound buyer I came across recently, Trevor Noah, said, said that the the the more the economy grows, the more you have to pay for the village. Mhmm. Exactly. Which is pretty much the vibe. Right? And and so so you guys and it's really interesting how, actually, the story you tell us is pretty sympathetic towards government, actually. Right? Like, you're not, you're not saying
Absolutely. You're not. Yeah. Well, I'd I'd you know, Cormac Russell actually speaks to this really beautifully, but he sort of says, you know, your civil servants are your community's closest allies. They've dedicated their careers and their professions in service of community. And so, you know, we encounter so many incredible local government professionals or, you know, people in institutions more broadly, who we call the system doers, who are the change makers trying to pull the levers. They wanna achieve, the same outcome as community, and they're so empathetic towards that. But they're just snowed under and the struggle is so intense for them. But what our movement sort of seeks to do is help them feel seen and to connect with others, so they don't feel like a crazy isolated person who only cares about this stuff, that there's a whole movement of people really trying to work towards, changing the system for the better.
So so, we've diagnosed a a vicious cycle of, citizens doing less, government doing more, citizens becoming consumers, government becoming deliverers. And you but we've also diagnosed the kind of standing army as it were on both sides of that where there's there's this sort of will on the part of citizens to do more and not be consumers and a whole load of ideas and energy sort of ready and maybe having the odd festival, and then a standing army of system doers, system change makers, finding one another and being ready to do things slightly differently. So so then you're flipping that and you're creating a a virtuous cycle, not a vicious cycle. Right? Yeah. That's that's right. So we essentially
are building a bridge between the two of them and creating a space, a safe space for them to come together and actually talk in collaborative terms, to actually co design solutions together, because there is so much tension and there are really fractured fractured relationships. There's very low trust. Mhmm. And so our work is really centered in trust, and we have to demonstrate through positive local doing and supporting those local doers in having those really productive, proactive conversations to then demonstrate to those local government professionals that they can actually trust community to do this stuff. And it's helpful, I think, as well knowing that there is, you know, an intermediary organization like our movement
that is backing them up in that too. So your role almost as a as a a kind of confidence builder, a a a a a Translator. A translator, a holder of the of the of the space so that so that each can stop retreating from one another and actually start to step towards each other. Absolutely.
And, you know, the goal is a shared responsibility. So what does you know, that's gonna look slightly different at each place and that's okay. But how do we get to that middle ground? That's where the work's centered.
And what's, so there's a 180 town teams, a 150 odd in Western Australia.
Mhmm.
And and you're starting to I mean, I've been in Perth now for twenty four hours or so, and and and I'm seeing visibly manifest the the the the results of that, the the kind of the manifestations of that. Where does this where does the dream take you? Like, what what's what's the vision for this? Where does this go from here?
Well, yeah. I think well, certainly what we're learning that yeah. The more people who become part of the movement, the more things do shift. And, yeah, you know, it is exciting now to walk around the state and see all the work that all everyone's been doing as part of this movement. Yeah, the physical changes in the main streets and neighborhoods and town centers, which predominantly is about making places more friendly for people. So, yeah, you walk through Leaderville today with a, you know, where we put a town center in and lots of parklets, which is basically a parklet is where you take out a car bay and put in seating and, for people to be able to just sit and hang out, on the street. You know, we've, you know, well, we're gonna take you after this, down to, Fremantle where a town team down there is doing rewilding where they're lifting up all the pavement and putting in plants and trees. And yet, you know, the guys are down in in Ungarup today, like helping Cassie down, down there in doing their main street makeover. And, you know, so I think you think about and then, you know, you think about being able to see it, but it is a bit of a tip of an iceberg in terms of, yeah, all the work underneath in terms of all that system change, the education, the conversations, the thousands and thousands of conversations underneath that that have had to
make that all possible because it is a different way of doing, like, with citizen led. And you've built the you've built trust over a long period of time and moved at the speed of trust pretty slowly. But now there's starting to be some really structural shifts. So so so now that the Streets Alive program, like, actually significant government resource starting to open up at state level behind this kind of work. Can you tell me a bit more about that program and how that came about? Maybe Kendall will come to you on that. Yeah.
So Streets Alive is definitely an outcome of the movement, building trust at scale. So, you know, when that started two years ago, there was a similar number here in Western Australia, active town teams over a 150 communities, who are building positive relationships at a local government level. You know, state government are aware of that, and therefore, of of town team movement, RAC, were really focused on making more livable places through, you know, speed reduction and active transport. So we had demonstrated through their funding program, that town teams could do really meaningful, impactful projects. So fast forward, the state government then said, well, you know, we've got this objective of speed reduction, but we wanna do that from a grassroots level. So we want to change the attitudes and behaviors.
Rather than just changing the speed limit as a sort of government does this to the little people vibe. Right. Just to,
start a conversation around the role of a local road and the importance of that in the context of a high street or a main street or a town center or a small community. And, you know, what happens if we've got more kids walking and riding to school, more people feeling comfortable to walk around their neighborhood to play out of the front yard. How does that actually transform a place, make it more vibrant? How does that reduce isolation and loneliness and actually strengthen relationships and and strengthen the social fabric of place through this one objective of speed reduction. And so, you know, the opportunity then to work with the state government to design a behaviour change program, that builds the capacity of local people and importantly, creates a space for us to bring local government and community together to solve that problem together, which is where majority of our work is spent through that program, was hugely exciting, and it's never been done before in that way.
So we're talking, like, millions of dollars now coming from a road safety budget to support community organizations to animate their places with murals, and public art, and festivals, and these kinds of things in a way that creates a different atmosphere on these roads, creates a different conversation about speed. And and in some cases, I understand, like, actually does lead to communities actively embracing lower speed limits.
Yeah. That's right. So, there's already examples of that, where, you know, permanent speed reductions have been put in place as a result of Streets Alive project. I mean, that's the end game. We're only, you know, two years in now. So the first batch of prog at at at the $5,000 level, which is, more around the community conversation and co design piece. Even though they're the first rounds to be completed, they've still achieved speed reduction. We haven't even got up to the $100,000 projects being completed yet. So that's, you know, hugely exciting and a great indicator to us that this stuff is working.
I think it's so fascinating as a as a as a Londoner, when the the clean air zones, ultra low emission zones come in in London, there's a huge kind of political backlash and, and a and a really kinda dangerous moment in some ways for democracy. And it just makes me think like, imagine if a a really quite a tiny proportion of of the city budget had gone to community organizations to be animating their places and potentially holding some of these conversations, creating some of these sort of deliberative spaces, whether we might actually have given Londoners a way to express their kind of love of place and, and and actually kind of actually become advocates of clean air in local communities, rather than rather than it sort of coming in from the outside and then and then triggering triggering a backlash. It's it's quite a smart way of thinking about these things. Yeah. I think and, you know, that's the other exciting thing that is a product of this Streets Alive is that
is that, yeah, it works. It it it's proven now. We've got an amazing impact report, which is just two years in and it's still so early, but the results are incredible. And so, yeah, now we have got this model where is, you know, in this case, the state government funds and also gives us regulatory power to be able to work, which we then transfer to the community and local governments. And the way that Kendall has constructed the grants actually means that it's basically forcing them to to collaborate because the money can either go to the community group, but then they need to have the permission from the government to do the project or the money can go to the government. But they have to have a community group that they're collaborating with locally. Very smart. So they have to so we're forcing them to well, if you want the money and you wanna be part of this, you need to collaborate. And it's worked, you know? And so, you know, some When you were saying kicks in, but for the most part, it's worked. And I think you're right, John, and that's sort of what we're thinking now and especially, you know, that it is proven now we do have the trust of the state government. There's such a good vibe even from local government sector for for this for us and for this program. And we're, you know, we're now really taking off as sort of like, what other challenges can we use this model to tackle? And, yeah, that could be clean air. That could be greening. That could be health. That could be, you know, you name it. I think that's it's pretty exciting.
So that relationship the core of it is that relationship,
actually. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. So the, it's shifting trust through active doing and and proving to each other that, okay, we can actually come together and solve this problem. And therefore, next time when there is something else we wanna do, we can come together on that again and do more and do it differently and start to, yeah, stretch out into that gray area that people are often too scared to go. I love this. It's like, at the moment, it feels like everywhere,
we're we're so stuck in that vicious cycle of of not just of of government doing more and sits and doing less, but but also of of, as you say, of of of people trusting government less and then government trusting people less. And and these two things, like, the trust and the action pulling apart, and it can feel like that's totally irreversible and and like we're doomed. And yet what you guys have shown really practically is that that is that is a dynamic. That is a vicious cycle. But it but because it's a feedback loop, it can also be reversed. Mhmm. And actually, that the momentum can build in the opposite direction, and we can get to some really positive stuff. It can take a while to get that reversal started because you do have to move at the speed of trust to some extent, at least. And the speed of trust at the beginning maybe is pretty slow because it's been so eroded. But once that trust starts to build, then the momentum can build. It feels like you guys might be just at the beginning of a real acceleration, which is exciting to be here to see.
It does feel like that. I think I think that's a really good way of putting it actually. And and why and the doing seems to speed up that process because it's actually working together, completing a project together, seeing the outcome, seeing the response the positive response from community. It sort of seems to speed up that process. And because, as you said, it's in the commons and because it's place based, everyone can get involved. And we see and with the other incredible thing about what's happening with this with this approach is that we're getting bipartisan support. You know, the Greens party are involved. The Teals are involved. The Labour is heavily involved. Liberal MPs are involved. National MPs, which are the sort of rural party, you know, love it. So it's because we're sort of take able to take out the politics because it's for the greater good, and because it's popular. And that's really, really exciting because then you start thinking, wow. You know, this has got longevity because everyone is committed. And I think, part of that has has also been that because of the the because of the MPs are getting the kudos because, ultimately, it's the state money, which is part of you know? And so they're they're able to promote it to their local electorates. Hey. There's these grants that the state government's giving out that we're giving out. You know? Even though movement's administrating it, it's the government that's giving it out. So they get to look really good. They feel a part of it because they are. And, you know, so now we've got, you know, like dozens of MPs who are actively promoting the program and getting their people involved in something that, is traditionally been a real sore point for government because they're already always been blamed because, you know, there's x amount of 100 people who've been killed on the roads this year. And but but this is a tool that they can use to positively say, well, we're doing something about it. You can do something about it too. And it yeah. It's just, yeah. It's really cool.
It is cool. Okay. One last, place I wanna take this, which is, is there something, like, uniquely Aussie about this? Like, can can this happen anywhere? Or is this, like, is this part of me comes here and I'm, like, this is there's just a kind of, oh, you?
Give it a go, mate. Give it a go, mate.
Yeah. Do you think that's true, or do you think this or do you think this can happen anywhere?
I think it can happen anywhere, but I think that I think that it is because of our culture over here in WA. Like, we really do have a great culture in the sense that, yeah, we do, you know, we really, you know, people talk about it as a cliche, as Australian values that, you know, give it a go and give everyone a fair go. That's like the classic Australian cliche, but I think it is actually pretty pretty right. Like, we do have that culture over here, would you say, Kendall?
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Like, I think, it's definitely there's a little bit of that in our DNA, or wanting to chip in and and get it done together. Mhmm. Yeah. But I guess we always talk about this sort of remembering idea, and we're helping people remember that it's okay to come together to create change. And that's been forgotten, as we're participating less in community life. It's just like the knowledge is sort of getting a little lost. And, yeah, the the knowledge that that feeling of contribution is so powerful. Like, that's where true abundance comes from. So you sort of unlock it all,
and we remember that. Yeah. It's possible. Yeah. I thought actually sorry. Go on, John. Oh, yes. So I was just gonna build on that because I think it's a really important point, like, because a lot of it is it's in re empowering ourselves as well, like, because and I think when you for anyone who's done any sort of community project and, you know, and often the harder it is, the more fulfilling it is. But even if it's not hard, it's still fulfilling, because you're tapping into something that you can't tap into as a consumer where you just earn money and buy shit. I love that fight club line. You know, earn money to buy shit. You don't need to impress people you don't like. You know, that's sort of one of our mantras. Hilarious. But this is sort of like, do something good for people who you hope will like it. And then if they do like it, then that's a bonus. But even if they don't like it, it's like, fuck it. I did that. You know? And Do stuff that's free to impress people you do like and do stuff that you do care about. Yeah. It's funny that. Yeah. Yeah. But it is. And it's like, I don't know. It's it for me, it's been fulfilling. You know, we talk about happiness, you know, separate to fulfillment. And I think, real fulfillment, comes when you know that you really did something of real value, you know, and
all that other consumerism stuff just feels pretend. Yep. You know, and I think I think, what I'm hearing is you talk about this and thinking to the to the question, like, is this uniquely Aussie or can it happen anywhere? It's like, what I'm hearing, I think, is that it's actually pretty fundamentally human. Yeah. But maybe the kind of, oh, yeah. Give it a go. It's it's just the the sort of forgive my apology, Australian accent. It's sort of those words have to be delivered in that accent. That that is the that's the sort of, that might be the lever to awaken that to to provoke the memory to to remember it here. And there might be slightly different ways to wake it up in different places. But the thing that you're waking up is pretty fundamentally human. Absolutely.
Authentically human. Yeah. It's it's, we're a social species. Yeah. We're actually, you know, I don't think by design, meant to be individualistic. It's just something through different sort of forces
that have kind of landed us here where we are today. But We wanna be seen. We wanna feel like we can make a difference in the world. We wanna feel like we belong.
And and yeah. We want, to do the best for the collective, really. And then and that's what this type of contribution makes you realize. It's really about reciprocity, and that's hugely powerful. That's where abundance comes from, that feeling of abundance. It's not through consumerism. This was How to Save Democracy, the podcast for people who love democracy but know we've got serious work to do to save
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