Too often, community engagement has become an extraction process.
You give your time, knowledge, experience and trust. The organisation takes what it wants, writes its report and moves on. You are left feeling used, no better informed, less trusting and far less likely to take part next time.
I have seen it across almost everything I have been involved in. In agriculture, I have lost count of the times I have been asked to contribute to a strategy, explain what is happening on the ground, share what communities know and help identify what might succeed. The organisation takes the information, writes the report and moves on.
The same thing happens in our community. My local council is not unusual. This way of consulting people has become normalised across governments and organisations. People are asked to give their time, knowledge and trust, often after the important choices have already been made.
Governments have helped create the trust crisis they now claim to be worried about, and we can see the consequences in very different parts of Australian politics.
People who feel repeatedly ignored can reach the point where they no longer want to repair the system. They want to punish it. They want someone who will tear it down, humiliate the people running it and make those they blame pay.
That is when the knight on the white horse appears, promising to ignore the rules, sweep institutions aside, name an enemy and act with the force others have lacked. These figures are not being trusted to govern. They are being chosen to blow things up.
Others take the opposite path. They believe they have the capacity to enter the system and change it from within. Both responses tell us something about the distance that has opened between people and those elected to represent them.
Hannah Ferguson’s decision to stand as an independent against Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in Grayndler is one of the clearest examples. She has built a large audience through Cheek Media by talking about politics with younger Australians. She is no longer content to comment on the political system from the sidelines. She is putting her own name on the ballot and taking on the Prime Minister in his own seat.
Her candidacy rests on a blunt argument. The major parties have stopped listening to the people they represent.
The predictable response will be that she cannot win Grayndler. That is the safest possible way for the political establishment to dismiss what her candidacy is telling them.
The question is not whether Hannah Ferguson can defeat Anthony Albanese. The question is why a young woman with a large audience, a successful media platform and years of political commentary has decided that talking about the failure of representation is no longer enough.
The major parties can dismiss her chances. They would be foolish to dismiss the reason she is standing.
Paul Stepczak’s LinkedIn post adds another layer to this argument. He names something I care deeply about, what happens when organisations take people’s time, knowledge and trust, then give little back.
People attend workshops, complete surveys, arrange childcare, share lived experience and explain what a proposal will mean for them. The organisation gains the information. It can use those stories and insights to strengthen a strategy, prepare a report, support a funding application or show that consultation took place. The people who contributed are often left wondering what happened next.
Paul asks three questions that should be part of every engagement process:
- How do we show people we listened?
- What can we act on now?
- How will people know their contribution made a difference?
They are simple questions. They are also rarely answered well.
Too often, the process is designed around what is easiest for the organisation. A survey is opened. A few pop-up sessions are scheduled. A closing date is set. Submissions are counted. A report is prepared. The community is then told it had an opportunity to participate.
That is a very low bar for democracy.
Kiama Council’s draft engagement strategy gives us a local example of how thin that engagement can become. Council runs a few pop-up sessions. Some were cancelled because staff were unavailable. Residents are then directed to Have Your Say, where several major strategies can be open for comment at the same time and due on the same day.
That is a considerable ask of people. They are expected to find the documents, read them, understand the implications and prepare useful responses, often across several complex subjects at once.
People are not a source of free information to be tapped whenever an organisation wants evidence. They bring knowledge of place, history, relationships and daily life. They know where a policy will collide with reality, who may be left out, which promises have been made before and which solutions have already been tried.
They also know what they are giving when they share personal experience.
That contribution should change something. It should help define the problem, test the assumptions behind the proposal and reveal consequences that may not be visible from inside the organisation. It should help develop the options before one answer has already become the preferred answer. People should also be told what happened because they took part.
That does not mean every suggestion will be accepted. Councillors are elected to make decisions. They also have a responsibility to explain what they heard, what changed, what did not change and why.
A thank you at the end of a consultation period is not enough. A summary saying most respondents supported or opposed a proposal is not enough. People should be able to see where their knowledge entered the decision, whether the question changed, whether a risk was recognised, whether an option was added or whether a proposal was altered.
Paul is right to ask what people gain from engagement. They should gain knowledge too. They should walk away understanding more about the decision, the evidence, the competing pressures and their community. They should be able to see where their contribution made a difference and feel confident that giving their time was worthwhile.
That is an exchange. What we often have instead is extraction.
The organisation asks. The community gives. The organisation decides what to keep. The community waits.
Kiama Council has an opportunity to change that. It can avoid placing several major strategies on exhibition at once, give residents enough time to read and respond, make sure scheduled sessions go ahead, involve people before the options are narrowed and report back in a way that shows exactly what changed.
Most importantly, it can stop treating engagement as a stage that happens after the proposal has been written.
Community engagement should leave people knowing they were genuinely part of the process. They should walk away better informed about their community, able to see where their contribution went and confident enough to take part again.
This is what democracy between elections should look like.
The Hon. Kate Washington Minister for Families and Communities with students from St Brigid’s Primary School.
