Our local community Facebook pages have turned into a curious mix of the pub and community gatherings. You can find everything from lost dogs to plumbing tips to passionate debates about lack of parking and having to pay for the little amount of parking space we have. Some pages have 30,000 followers, and they’re where people go to see “what’s happening” around Kiama. But when it comes to politics, there seems to be an unwritten rule: don’t bring it up.
Why? Maybe people want Facebook to feel like the front bar, not Question Time. Maybe they think politics is too messy, or they’d rather keep their blood pressure down. Or maybe they just don’t want their neighbours to know which way they lean easier to argue about the best coffee in town than about housing policy.
The irony is that politics shapes nearly everything people do argue about online, housing affordability, health care, roadworks, the price of milk at Woolworths. Yet the moment someone raises candidates or policy, the chat can quickly slip from ideas into personalities, allegiances, or worse, a full-blown slanging match. What starts as policy talk ends up looking like a football celebration out of control at the pub.
That’s the challenge Cat Holloway has taken on with Kiama Votes, a pop-up Facebook group created to run for the NSW State Government Kiama by-election. Cat’s not a Facebook fan (frankly, who is anymore), but she’s willing to test whether our community can use it for something other than memes, marketplace bargains, and arguments about magpie swooping. She wants to see if we can ask candidates real questions, explore policies, and keep the focus on issues instead of insults.
It is, as she puts it, an experiment: can we disagree respectfully, listen with curiosity, and see the world from more than one perspective, without someone storming off like they’ve just been cut off at the bar?
Whether it works or not will depend on us.
The Kiama by-election is about who represents us in parliament, but it’s also about how we, as a community, talk about politics in public. If we cannot have those conversations in the places where we already gather, whether it’s the pub, local events, or now on Facebook , then where will we have them?
Let’s see if Kiama can make this election about the issues, not the noise. And if that sounds too serious, don’t worry, you can still argue about having to pay for parking at Woollies tomorrow.
FYI
Although the electorate is called Kiama, the boundaries reach well beyond the town itself. It takes in the whole Municipality of Kiama, the southern end of Shellharbour including Albion Park and the western side of Albion Park Rail, and the Shoalhaven north of the river, including Berry and Bomaderry. It also stretches west into the thinly populated country south of Nowra and out to Kangaroo Valley, and even picks up Marshall Mount on the edge of Wollongong. The name may say Kiama, but the seat covers a big and varied patchwork of communities, each with their own priorities.
#KiamaVotes #KiamaByElection #NSWPolitics #CommunityVoice #LocalDemocracy #HousingCrisis #HiddenHomelessness #AffordableHousing #EssentialWorkers #WalkableCommunities #CivicEngagement #Shoalhaven
