The Chaser Report - Conscious Tribes | Amanda Tattersall

Episode Date: August 25, 2026

Dom and Charles are joined by author of Conscious Tribes and host of the ChangeMakers podcast, Amanda Tattersall, to reflect on how to make real change in more ways than just big props. Plus, the untold story of how John Howard was the uncredited founder of GetUp!More info on Amanda's book 'Conscious Tribes' can be found here.And click here to learn more about ChangeMakers---Listen AD FREE: https://thechaserreport.supercast.com/ Follow us on Instagram: @chaserwarSpam Dom's socials: @dom_knightSend Charles voicemails: @charlesfirthEmail us: [e-mail] CEO’s Super-yacht upgrade Fund: https://chaser.com.au/support/ Send complaints to: [e-mail] Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gatigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report with Dom and Charles. And today we have a guest who I assume has come to us, Charles, to find out how to start a podcast that changes the world. It's Associate Professor Amanda Tadisol, another person in Charles's life with a much more impressive title than he has. No, I do recognise you. Now, where do we, where, where do you fit in? I'm really bad with names.

Yeah, it's so confusing for you. Home every night? Oh, my children, that's it. That's right. Yes, we, um, at that wedding. Yeah. That was, um, ours, yeah. Ours, yeah.

I went to that wedding. It was very, it was a good wedding. It was like a comedy show, but there was a bit where it seemed, I never actually checked. It seemed like there was actually a wedding, like, for about five minutes of this very entertaining event. Well, the thing is. is that, you know, with really good comedies, like world-class comedies, like Dumb and Dumber, for example. Oh, man.

Which I think our wedding was... Obviously, we were modelling. Yeah, basically. You unfortunately were. Yeah. Charles is Dumber. You need to have that sincere moment. Do you remember in Dumb and Duma, there's that moment where Lloyd goes, I want to be someone,

I want to mean something. I want to do something with our lives. Well, that's what our wedding was like. I mean, you had that little sincere, you know, 20 seconds. Good. Let me get a back slightly on track. We're here to talk about Amanda's new book, which is called Conscious Tribes, which is about how you change the world by getting people together.

And we will change the world ourselves now by taking some ads. Probably for the worst. Oh, dear. I don't know who the advertisers are today. All right. So Amanda, as an expert in social change and getting people together in getting hundreds of thousands of people, actually, to do things like marching across a bridge, I assume at last you've come to us for some tips. Oh, yes.

Or with all the answers, right? Either you've got the silver bullet or I do, right? That's the point. Because I know you run the Change Makers podcast. We'll talk about that. But, I mean, Charles, I know it's probably been a bit awkward that we haven't been asked yet about. It's a come on change. Yeah.

Come on the Changemakers podcast. That's outrageous. Why haven't you invited us? You know, well, you've still got a chance. You know, like once you start making some change, we'll have you on. It'll be great to have you shared. Yeah, I mean, it's, I feel like the guest list is pretty impressive. It's almost at a level where we could come on and share.

our insights. Yeah, right. I finally reached the calibre with Peter Garrett and Jen Robertson and people like that that we can have you guys. But you've had Andrew Dendon. Of course. And not us. Yeah, I know.

But, you know, he did do stuff out of comedy. The sincere moment in his wedding did last for 10 years and change policy in every single territory. So all we've got to do is go around Australia and, you know, work out ways to help them die more easily. Yeah, or your equivalent. Oh, I got there. Yeah.

Maybe we can help comedians die. Well, look, I think we've done quite a lot of stuff in that area already. But look, no, this reminds me Amanda of a chat we once had where I asked you, it was I think during the time of the umbrella revolution about how the world actually changes. And it was such an inspiring moment. And people will remember just to get a bit earnest for a moment. All these people, ordinary Hong Kong is going out on the streets with an umbrella. Good to be sun safe, although that wasn't the only reason.

in the hope of actually fixing stuff. It didn't work. But sometimes it does. And so I remember I interviewed you about how this stuff happens and actually how you manage to convince people to come together and change the world. And the book features very early, one of your first efforts that did mobilize hundreds to thousands of people, whether it actually changed the world, we'll get to. But can you tell us about how you get Australians who famously don't tend to get, you know,

It's not like we go to rallies and stuff. We don't have this American thing where we fill stadiums to go and watch Malcolm Turnbull or Anthony Albanese or something. I'm shocked as to, why could that be? How do you actually get, you know, six figures of people to do anything? So I think that you're in particular referring to the protests around the war in Iraq, which was in 2003. And I was part of Organizer. And the book starts with this. The largest protest in Australia's history was on the 16th of February.

and 2003, you know, we like to call it half a million people in Sydney. The police called it 250,000. I'll go with any of those numbers, really, because that is a big number of people. That is a not just going to watch Malcolm Turnbull or Anthony Albanese. This is something's going on. When you're being talked down to a quarter of a million people, it's a big number.

Exactly. I'm happy to go with their minimum if that's what they need. But that protests, I mean, why did people come into the street, not dissimilar to the umbrella movement, like when a clash or a sort of a moment of reactivity emerges, you will get big mobilisations. And up until that point, when I'd been involved in social change, I'd been involved in the student movement and the union movement and lots of different mobilisations around different issues, I had kind of come to the thinking that that is how social change works, right? Like your protests, the policy changes, boom, right? But that was a

watershed moment for me, because we had the largest protests in Australia, part of the large just protest in global history, like around the world, the same thing happened, around the country, the same thing happened. And the war went ahead. Like, it failed, right? On its own terms of trying to stop the war, it didn't work. In some ways, it's been since then that I have been asking this question, both in all the different forms of activism that I have done, which is like setting up get up, which is setting up the Sydney Alliance, which is now doing the Changemakers podcast and being a researcher of social change, asking this question, how does it, how do you make a difference. I do note, my love, that you have evaded the question. Like, Dom's question

specific was, how do you change the world? And you said, oh, wow, you know, like, you've actually evaded the question. You sort of gone, oh, yeah, I think about that every day. That's true. So, so appreciated husbands, right? So, but my answer is. I was hoping I was hoping with the sense. But my simple answer is there's not one answer to that question, right? My, my, my, my, my, The book is called Conscious Tribes, because instead of focusing on the idea that we can be assured that through collective action, we'll be able to make change, like by gathering with umbrellas in 2014 in Hong Kong or around the war in Iraq or any number of protests, that is not necessarily going to guarantee that we will change the world.

Yeah, the umbrella thing, if I recall also. Yeah, 79 days and it was wiped up, right? Really do the job, yeah. But what we can do is build organizations, connection, as I say, conscious tribes, where we have an eternal capacity to be able to try and make a difference. And actually, in our attempts to make a difference, we make a difference to ourselves and each other. And that is something that is retained irrespective of what is going on in the world. Now, it doesn't mean you should just sit around and be nice to each other and that's enough.

I don't think that. The public life is deeply problematic and needs to be resisted and push. at. But as we push at those changes in public life, we also need to be able to be learning and changing and understanding the world around us as we do it. And that is part of the change that we achieve. I do think the chaser has a spectacularly poor track record of achieving social change. But I will blow up just for one second because at the time, the hundreds of thousands of people were marching across the bridge. We did succeed in changing John Howard's home phone number. That's a very good. That was a pretty good stunt. That was a good. That was a good.

It still hung in this studio. That front cover of the newspaper is hung in this studio right here. Which says something like John Howard ignores the people. So call him it home on double-nine double two. Whatever it was, a number that was changed after many, many prank calls. And that came out the week after that rally. It was. Like, Charles was at the rally with me and, you know, 500,000 people. But this was the part of the power of that protest.

So the protest failed at one level, right? like it didn't achieve the outcome, the war went ahead. But actually, even that is it's a mistake to say that that didn't mean it didn't make a difference, right? Firstly, it created a whole conversation instead of actions amongst people like the front cover of the chaser. But also, like, get up came out of that. Barack Obama came out of that. You know, Sydney Airlines came out of that. Like lots of things aren't like A plus B equals C is not how social change works.

Yeah, yeah. It's an iterative relational, like it's more than. just a simple addition. Can we unpack how we got from people marching across the bridge to a lot of really annoying emails in my inbox? So the war in Iraq protest was at Hyde Park. The marching across the bridge was for reconciliation the year before, but both were, sorry, in 2000, both were really important and both didn't achieve what they wanted, right? The reconciliation protest was to try and get John Howard to say sorry and he did not, right? How that led to get up

Well, you know, there's lots I talk about it a little bit in the book But at the time No, you do the full thing You actually, you do the whole scoop on it I do do a bit of a scoop on it And there's a whole origin story Yeah, which has never been written up before

No, it hasn't I thought I put it on paper So I was already interested Don't spoil it though No I'm just going to give some of the details We start in a in a coffee shop that has such bad coffee that the people you were meeting with don't know Sydney.

Yeah, I do mention that detail. I knowing one of the people involved. I did find that at very far. And yes. But the thing was is that even during the war in Iraq protest, I was collecting lots of email addresses, right? Like people were emailing me. It was a bit ad hoc.

People hadn't used email before. It's not like today we're spam as your friend. Like actually emailing protest was unheard of. And all of a sudden people started emailing me. I had 12,000 people on a war in Iraq. But you collected. Oh my gosh. You collected.

No, but this is the thing, Dom. That must have filled your palm pilot right up. It was, yeah, it was a headache, man. No, but Dom, she collected, she collected them on paper. Many on paper. Like, so they'd turn up to rallies and you'd write down your email address on paper. And then I'd put them on the list. Because no one had smartphones.

So it had to be manually entered by Amanda. Not just me. It wasn't. I actually invited the entire staff of unions and yourself. Wales at the time. Thanks unions of South Wales to help. But then correct me if I'm wrong, Amanda, but my memory of it is that originally that was all done through Outlook. But the way you maintained that list was you had... Outlook, I know. Microsoft to Excel.

And Yahoo Groups. And then you would mail merge it with Outlook. Yeah, but this was pre-Google. I cannot believe that your commitment and your team's commitment to social change was so great that you managed to successfully wrestle with Microsoft programs. I know, I know. I mean, the hills be climbed.

Well, I think that's why it failed. It was Clippy. So you're trying to change the world. Girl and in drops that. Yeah. I'm Dick Cheney's best friend, Clippy. Yeah.

He was actually the one running the US government for much of this period. Yeah. So anyway, so I was interested in email. I could see that in the US there was this group called Move On. I was tracking their work.

And so then when my friends, who I'd gone to uni with, turned up with this idea of, let's just do move on Australia. I was curious, right? But, you know, there was, like, all good politics is local, and you can't just transplant U.S. strategy to Australia. So we had some chats about, you know, changing their approach,

which I document in detail in the book. And then the other, I guess the other thing that I was able to do is I raised the money. You know, like people like to want to be able to raise money. But rich people are cautious. And the people who actually put the first money into union, unions New South Wales, John Robertson, right? And they weren't, you know, philanthropists concerned about whether they were going to get

enough a reputation associated with a new adventure. Union's New South Wales was on the chopping line. The election just before had basically been a victory march for John Howard and he was going to do workplace legislation. 2004. The majority in the Senate are in his fourth term. That's right. And announced industrial relations reform was his big thing.

And so I was sitting in a context where an all. organization that did have resources, not limitless resources, but had resources, also had enormous amounts of sort of courage, right? Like they were prepared to fund and do things that they weren't ordinarily going to do. And so it was this sort of confluence of this digital stuff being involved in lots of movements, a friend coming over and this sort of interesting political moment that the unions found themselves in that gave birth to get up. I mean, I like to say, John Howard doesn't realize this, but he helped give birth to get a. up. But also through the whole anti-war, I mean, the mood of the time was that. And so when you get

hundreds of thousands of people, you know, on the street, and then they get a no, that then builds up pressure in the system. So it's interesting to see in the ways it can be channeled. Well, don't they say bad things happen fast? Good things happen slowly. Did you read that on a? I think it was a meme. Yeah. But, thanks Instagram. No, but I kind of feel like that's part of what this book is about.

It's kind of my argument in a way. Yeah, is that. And one of the interesting things that I think is all the way through the book is, yeah, we've talked about organizations being set up in the wake of the anti-war movement and everything. But part of what comes through to me in this book is that actually you don't need to set up new organizations. That there's actually tons of organizations that people are already. involved in that are things that could be the conscious tribes that change the world.

Yeah. If we just got a bit more conscious about us. This brings us a bit too to the Sydney Alliance, which is this grouping of a bunch of institutions that people were already part of. And it's interesting because, I mean, so many of us grow up as part of particular groups, whatever it might be. It might be a union. It might be a church.

It might be a community organization. It might be a sporting team. and it is interesting how those things give meaning to our lives. But then when people come together, when there's a common cause, yeah, things can happen. As you say, you don't necessarily need some big snazzy new campaigning 2.0, you know, system. You can actually use the old stuff. And this is why it's called community organising, right? And so with, you know, the Sydney Alliance is based on the idea you should organise the organised, right?

Like start from strength. People are already in groups. Let's bring them together. but also let's, you know, let's give people the sort of tools and tips to be able to get their organisations to sort of think about what's really important, you know, like what are the most pressing issues going on in that church at the moment? Well, are they the things that are being spoken of up the front? Or if we run a listening campaign and ask everyone about their challenges with housing or transport, maybe we'd find out a whole bunch of other things that the church

could enact its commitment and capacity too, right? So there's that. But I, Just to want to touch on what you said, Charles, about the organisations you're already part of. Like, the other thing that I'm really, I guess, really pushing with the thinking differently part, like why we need to think differently about making a difference is not only that you're probably part of organisations, but we probably are not realising or recognising that the parents and citizens group, the community gardens group, even the strata group, let me, dare I say, the Housing Association, the Youth Centre, these are groups that are more than. incapable of making change in public life. And I think we brush past them and think, oh, we need

to have some, like you were describing, some tremendous meme-like national thing. And my argument is, I think that's a mistake. I think that's a mistake and to not overlook the groups and people that were already in relationship with. I'm going to unmute the PNC chat on WhatsApp. I'm going to have to do it clearly to get somewhere. But there's also this idea in the book of paradoxes of how it feels like the more you learn, the more you realize that there are other ways of doing things. And so as much as you had all this early success and went out and did all this really impactful stuff, and you then found all these other ways of being and of doing things. And you've done this globally with change makers, but you've done it in Australia as well

and found some people who've managed to influence their communities in completely different ways. Yeah, and it's this thing about setting aside the silver bullets, right? there is not one way to make a difference. Like, I've been trying to do this for 30 years. And the one thing I'm absolutely certain of is that there's not one way, right? And the paradoxes, the idea of public and private or power over and power with or action and reflection, these dualisms that we often think of as, like, distinct and separate, right? Public life over here and private life over here.

But actually, I talk about in the book how they're deeply connected. And when we see those connections, we start to see how our lives are entwined with the world out there and entwined with others and that they're connected to lots of different ways of working that I consider myself a community organiser. I love community organizing. But sometimes community organizing is not the right answer to the problem in front of us. There's a different answer to the problem. Or it needs a different thinking altogether.

And the paradoxes are designed to help stimulate that thinking and say, I don't know how you should do your change in your context. Here are some tools, a map of how things are working so you can start working that And to me, that resource is so important if we're going to be really serious about making a difference for the long haul, especially in these sort of ridiculously difficult environment that we're in. So there are ways of thinking and, in a sense, the journey to realize how little you know that definitely works.

But to me, it's talking to people in different cultures and all the different contexts. There are some commonalities, though, aren't there? Yeah, well, you know, the idea that relationships are helpful, that being able to relate with others while not feeling like you need to always agree with them, being able to hold difference, the power of difference. Can we talk about people you disagree with? Because maybe you can give me some tips for podcasting with Charles. I know. I've had to use all my skills. But no, but you've talked to people you actually really disagreed with and managed to. Oh yes. Middle of the book, friends. It goes, it goes crackingly, you know, dramatic around a serious disagreement.

You want me to talk more about it down. It was a snapshot. Yeah. Okay. So I was in conversation with an Indigenous community organiser from the Nihore, the Cree in Canada. And I'd met her before and we'd been, had chats, we'd sort of had built up a rapport and had spoken about involving her in the book. And I wanted to talk to her about the word tribes because I knew that there was an issue there. Other friends had sort of flagged it as something that I needed to really better understand. And so I wanted to talk to her about that. Well, she had a very direct and immediate it response that I, the audio book is even more fun because I get to sail the swearing. But, you know, she was very direct of like, what the hell are you doing?

But then, because of a variety of things I also unpack in that chapter, it didn't break us, right? We didn't follow the script of, you are the worst racist person ever. You're cancelled. You're cancelled. Right. It didn't follow that script, right? Because of partly the relationship we had previous. And we had 20, 90 minute conversations talking about the book over 18 months, like a lot, right?

And many of them had nothing to do with that. Many of them just were us getting to know each other better, me learning more about a story. But we also explored this, you know, paradox of curiosity and judgment. And the ability, how do you hold disagreement while not losing yourself and how you manage to try and negotiate those two things in relationships? That is quite like Charles and me, except that rather than having 20, 90 minute conversations, we've had 1,30 minute conversations. There you go. It's not to similar.

Maybe we should have you on change makers. Oh, God, I can't talk too many more. And how did that end up getting resolved? Like, I mean, when you had that disagreement? Because when I saw conscious tribes, I thought, gosh, I bet that's something that you've had a lot of thought about. And it was sort of ironic, you're very conscious about using the word tribe. I know.

Not unconsciously using the word tribe, but consciously using the word tribe. Well, it is on the title, so I did end up staying with the topic. But everything about it changed. And part of me doesn't want to unveil all of the details. But I did a lot of research work on the history of the word across millennia. And I also sought a much more full understanding of what tribes meant to Kisipissom. But we had a series of rules, which was she never needed to agree with me. And I didn't need to agree with her.

But that was almost like a protocol. for us to be able to get to know each other. And it was explicitly said, right? That's so helpful. It's kind of the key to a good marriage as well, isn't it? Jesus. They don't agree. Clearly not.

I mean, it doesn't agree with that. But that's okay, because. But the other thing, and we had a lovely launch event at, and it was a shame that Craig was involved, but it was a very moving conversation. And you give a lot of yourself when you do this stuff, and you have shared a lot of things in the book about your own challenges. And, I mean, on social media as well in recent years,

I've been so fascinated to see how much of yourself, as someone myself who doesn't much likes sharing hard things, I'd rather make a joke. You've been very... Really, I don't know what that would be like. You imagine it's just such an unfamiliar thing. That would be so annoying if you've to live with. Anyway, that's something that you've been real journey for you.

Yeah, yeah. And just to be a bit earnest for a second, it does feel as though this is part of the process that you've, reckon with the things that have gone well and things that haven't, and you're in a position where you're kind of putting it all down in a book after all these years and all these battles and all these scars, frankly. Yeah. No, thank you.

Yeah. Like, to make not mysterious, I have bipolar. I had a psychosis when I was 19. I had another psychosis when I was 38. And that mental illness both sparked my desire to make a difference in the world because I was so sick, so young. I wanted to make sure I did what I could with what the life I had. When I was 38, I lost my job.

job at, you know, I'd set up a big organisation called the Sydney Alliance and I lost my job at my return to work meeting. And all of that was very, very hard. And it's easy when hard stuff happens, well, to rage into the quiet and to, and to just be angry and to blame everyone and to feel resentful. And I'm no saying, like I did that too. Like, but I didn't do it in public and it gave me the space and time to be able to firstly find a new set of connections with the Sydney Alliance, which I'm not going to reveal. That's the climax of the book. You can read the book if you're interested. But also a reconciliation with myself. And a reconciliation that having a mental illness bipolar is partly private, but it's also

partly public and actually rather than just seeing it as something to be ashamed of and stigmatized, that actually there's learning in it, right? Paradoxes. That's an interesting word to use. Bipolar is a paradox of high and low, right? I learned a lot about understanding difference and sameness and connection and identity through reflecting on my own. And so a whole bunch of new ways of understanding, making a difference, I guess, were able to open up when I was able to, you know, writing a book is a very slow process, you know, like I did it over many years, and I would write on a Friday often. And it was just this slow, almost like a liturgy, like this sort of slow patient unpacking or opening up the layers of what had gone on

to try and make new sense of it. Yeah. Yeah. And it feels like, is it too cute to have an analogy between what you've had to do internally, but also your approach to the mission of your life in a sense, because God knows shit happens. And the fact, if you can actually cope with that and build, it's almost like when things are designed in a way, if we're able to build in resilience to adversity, it just feels like you have to do that or things won't actually get done, right?

We all have whatever challenges we have. And if you can't, you know, compensate for that in whatever way, you're not going to get anywhere, whether you're trying to actually achieve change or just get through something like that. And so it feels like these are constructive lessons for what you're trying to do. Well, life is a creative adaptation to the world that we're given, right? And I had that was very personal for me because my internal constitution creates a level of uncertainty and challenges and difficulty that I have to navigate, right? But that's the case for everyone. That's public life. That's the world we live in, especially now where things feel so uncertain.

And so some of the insights I gained from working out how to accept and navigate my internal situation actually spoke to some of the sort of context and crisis that we're in where, you know, like I wasn't able to just give up on myself. I chose not to give up on myself. I had to keep walking forward. But then how to walk forward at times where things feel very bleak. Well, I guess I learned something from that. in that I had to. I didn't just turn off the screens and pretend it wasn't happening.

Like I didn't, I worked out how to engage with that in a way that could be constructive and lifelong. What's the term I was trying to think of before? I think it's fault tolerance. Is that right? Charles, when you're designing something, you have to design for a certain proportion of things not working. Like, you know, in a program or a, whenever you design like a car or Axel or something, you've got to build it in such a way that it can actually put up with quite a lot before it fails. And it feels like that's us in a way as well. And I don't know how you achieve the fault tolerance to survive all these decades with Charles. It's true. I mean, you know, of all the adversities, no. No, but I mean, we're all getting older. You know, Charles has recently turned

40 years, we know. You and I men are, you know, 50s. We're a bit more mature. Yeah. But I feel like the longer you go on, the more you realize that everything is, it's the insudification, really, that we've come to embrace that a lot of things are going to be very shit a lot of the time, but that doesn't mean you can't try and get things done. So that's it. How do we fix everything, Amanda? Sure. So my answer in the book is simply very basic, right? Like, it's like the opposite. I'm hoping it's podcasting. I'm really hoping podcasting helps. Okay, cross your fingers. Like my answer is to have a level of faith and trust in those who are around you working with others and to know that open yourself enough for them to change you and to you to change them as you try and change

the world together. And if that happens, then I think that we'll be richer. And to be honest, like there is no magic, you know, political campaign or superhero left-wing political leader or centrist political leader. That's not where the change is going to come from. Even Mamdani? Even Mandarney or Andy Burnham or Trump, if you're in the right, like that. That vision, or Obama, like we've seen this. Trump ever let anyone down. We've seen this vision before. And I, you know, I just, I encourage us to think less about those big figures and think

about the big capacity of a lot of small. And if a lot of us who are already involved in organizations were to actively, not just fundraise at the PNC, but think about what issues that need to be changed to improve kids' education more broadly or the local environment more broadly, if we can, like they do in Minnesota where the kids, the parent groups are the ones who are defending the kids from ice grades, you know what I mean? Like, it's interesting that's the sort of key part of that change over there. If we can think a bit bigger about the small organizations we're in and we have those groups

being more active, I think that is where democracy gets rebuilt. And this is the point where we plug the Change Makers podcast because what you've done is, and there's lots of theory. You know, a lot of us sat around when we're young and talked about changing the world in a very abstract sense, but you've actually got all these microcosms. in all kinds of different walks of live and all kinds of cultures. Can you give us a little snapshot? Well, even the kinds of places.

The episode that, like, there's an episode out just recently, who is a woman who's a photographer. And so we talk about how seeing differently, literally her capacity to see differently offers sort of new ideas and suggestions for how to make change. A few weeks ago, we had on Peter Garrett, who's had a lifetime of doing lots of different changemaking from singing at midnight all and doing politics

there to doing parliamentary politics, right? Like it's quite a complex set of places to work across, reflecting on the possibilities and limits of those spaces. You must have had a very interesting chat. I haven't listened to that one yet. Yeah, he's great. He must have an interesting chat about Labor and what it can and can't do. Yeah, yeah.

But he's got healthier reflections, right? He's doing the Orcas thing now. It's about like, how do you hold the, he has a great sense about what it takes to hold Labor government to account. He was part of one. You know what I mean? Well, yeah. He thought he could make it work from the inside.

Yeah, yeah. And so, you know. What an idiot. You know, but he's a great example. Like, he's in his 70s, right? Yeah, and he was Environment Minister. It's amazing to remember that. Yeah, but he's still doing it, you know, like whatever critique you might have.

Like, this guy is still doing it. Like, I want to be like him. I want to still be angry and prepared, but also have the energy to be able to be making a difference throughout my whole life. How's your singing voice, Amanda? I don't know. I should have got him to crack one out. It doesn't need to be good. How's your dancing?

It does need to be bad. So you'll be fine. You'll be fine. But yeah, we have lots of, you know, and then people from, then people from more conventional movements as well, we had a chat, I mean, we had a chat today about what's going on in Hong Kong because a bunch of activists have just been found guilty and about to be sentenced. You know, like, there's just a lot to talk about with what's difficult in the world.

The purpose of change makers is to not just bemoan the problems, but to sort of realistically assess the challenges we face and then identify different ways that you can respond to them. Yeah, we found bemoaning the problems. I know, I think that's the easier. Yeah, yeah. Just bemoan everything. I'm really glad there's demarcation between you all. No, this is the segment separation.

Your podcast announced. I did the bemoaning in this relationship. We had quite a long chat about Labor actually this week on the Chaser report. And it was helpful to get an email telling us that we fundamentally, in fact, Charles specifically got one of the details of one of them. Yeah, Pat Conroy, actually, I do want to correct that. Yeah, I said Pat Conroy. was in the right. He's in fact...

He's in fact, in the left. Thank you for correcting me. He just could have asked your other left. Yeah. Of course, that is very hard to distinguish nowadays. In fairness. He's in the left. But also, is he part of the hard left?

He was always in the soft left when I knew him in Young Labor. Right. Genuinely a snapshot into the first tattersoll, our soul. And then what was the other detail that we got wrong? Oh, I thought he was in cabinet, so he wasn't very junior. Oh, he's not junior. I mean... Well, I mean, he's a star.

He's been around a while. He's basically, he's Richard Miles material. Oh, my God. What is it? Where is this gone, guys? Let's just, I feel like I've gone back into a normal episode. We should acknowledge that this is stuff that I actually, like, I do actually know these things temporarily. And then my brain seems to expunge the details of her Vazrolls in the ALP quite rapidly.

Okay. So having talked about all that, having your life's work in book form, in conscious Tribes. What are you going to do next? Is there a problem we can actually make some traction on? The war stuff was, um, was difficult. But what, what's, what's, what's something in the world that we can actually, perhaps through the, the medium of an incredibly unreliable podcast. To bemoan. No, no, what's something we can actually do? Yeah. What's, what's, everybody go join groups and talk about what they care about. Like the whole, I guess that one of the points of conscious tribes is to say, um, people will be

the answer of the difference they want to make. You know, like, I, look, I can give me my short. You were saying the other day that one of the biggest changes you reckon you've ever made was we had a bad principal at our local school. And you led the charge with all the other little parents to get rid of it. Get rid of the principal and you won. And actually, in terms of the profound impact that that had, both on our son and on the school and on the school and on the school's on. ongoing commitment to students is, it's quite remarkable. And that's, it's not something to be, like, you know, I think everyone says, oh, democracy

is crumbling, democracy, you know, is in trouble and everything like that. And you're going, well, the whole point about democracy is, it is what you make it. That's the whole definition. And that what we should be doing is, you know, using the democratic levers that we have, the fact that we can intervene in our own agency and our own lives and actually change things. And that's, I think, where, you know, the baddies want everyone to feel hopeless. And the actual answer to there is to just not be hopeless. But it's also true, isn't it?

I think that certainly in lots of places where people care enough about it, an issue, like particularly with social media, where there's a flashpoint when a policy is launched. And we've seen this a lot of times during the Albanese government where they come up with an idea and actually it's a pretty resounding no from people. They do backpedal. Like there is a there is an ebbin flow. The media portray it so negatively. That's listening. It's good.

Just wish they'd listened before they'd written the policy in which case it probably would have been better. But you know. So yeah, there's democracy. There is an even flow. And so we do see our voice is being heard all the time. Especially there's pushback from murder. Particularly Charles's, because Charles's voices. Particularly if you try and if the change that you've announced might actually.

stop entrepreneurs. That's when we really... Oh yeah, that was out. You wasn't it? Yeah. But I guess the thing is, is the part of, look, you're not, we don't hear about some of the best stuff that happens. And it's, yep, it's not going to be in a big glorious campaign. It's not going to be flashed in, but it doesn't mean it doesn't matter. And it is true. The changes that we made at our sons' school were life changing, life changing, you know, like for them and for us.

And, you know, what is small is big. And sometimes what is big is small, right? Like you could run a petition online and you get a thousand million signatures and it's sent off to someone. And it looks big because it's like on a big issue. But it's sort of fleeting and it doesn't really matter. Like for me, the bigness is in people's participation, how it changes them, how they're sort of equipped to be able to do more change.

That's the stuff for my mind that we need more of. That's what's thinned out in our democracy over the last 40 to 50 years. And if we tend to that, we tend to that muscle. The power of mass power of the market, the sort of the way in which the state often ignores people will shift because there's just more people capable of not just speaking, but, but with an organised voice pushing them to act. A muscle you can make stronger. I mean, I personally am not into that sort of thing, but I can see that that might be a good idea.

It's okay. You can podcast about how great they are. Oh, fantastic. No, but it's also just thinking about the way the world has changed during the time when you've been doing what you've been doing. There are examples where, where there is a new normal and there has been. lasting change. And one of the most obvious ones is the same sex marriage debate, where it's just not even discussed anymore. It's finished, right? There's actually,

and I remember just how long that debate took. Oh, yeah. I did a podcast with change makers on the history of it. Yeah. But in order to actually capture it, the podcast would have needed to be about 30 years long because it just kept going backwards and forwards and the same conversations. But then having resolved that, even though it was resolved in a way where, you know, the postal ballot and all this kind of stuff, it was awful. It was a very slow and painful way of answering the conversation where a poll could have sufficed perhaps, but that's done right, so it is

possible. Totally. I helped the campaign around pay, we call it paid maternity leave, now pay parental leave arguing for six months. And it was, I didn't actually include the story in the book, but it was, you know, technical term, it was a shit fight, and there was a lot of internal fighting amongst different unions and groups about

whether we should go for a modest modest 14 weeks or a bold six months. It's six months in Australia now. Like we got, it's happened, you know, It took. That was started in 2008. I was pregnant with our first son, like so, changed to happen slowly. Vested interest. Totally vested interest. It's called self-interest. It works. For both parents as well, which is exciting. But, you know, it, it's... I want to have more children. Yeah, I know Peter Kucel would have loved it. But it's, you're right that sometimes you can win a new

normal. Even the Your Rights at Work campaign, in part, won a new normal about workplace legislation. It made a thing that no side of politics wanted to make worse. because it was shown that people would stand up for it. So you can make change, but it has to be substantial, right? Contrast that to say climate change, where the climate movement has done lots of protests, but doesn't necessarily have that organisational embedded heft and it's really struggled, you know? Yeah, I was feeling quite optimistic about the possibilities. And you mentioned the words climate change.

Yeah. Maybe we should stop the podcast. But no, look, Conscious Tribes is out now. And Charles got a free copy. We had to pay for hours in my household, but I'm glad we did. And your audience are invited to pay for this. Go and buy a copy. And, yeah, think about the process because I like to think that the listeners to this podcast

do care about two middle-aged men complaining about change. Yes, bemoaning. That's what they're into. The bemoaning report. All the best with it. Thank you. Thank you so much. And the man's podcast is Change Makers.

It's true. We're part of the Eaukonny Kless Network. Catch you tomorrow.