I went to the Berry Writers Festival and attended a session with community organiser Amanda Tattersall, co-founder of GetUp and author of Conscious Tribes: Thinking Differently About Making a Difference, and Paul Kelly, editor-at-large of The Australian and author of The Twilight of Exceptionalism: The Liberal and Conservative Era. Kate Dezarnaulds moderated, introducing the panel as “one from the left, one from the right, and I’m the other wiggle in the middle.” She had read both books. Paul’s runs to 764 pages, which she reassured us is “effectively four books.” She took three and a half thousand words of notes on it alone. Some of us would call that a book. She called Amanda’s “a field guide and a personal coach.” The session has given me a great deal to think about.
This is my thought dump.
Action and reflection
“If you just act and there is no reflection, then it leads to thoughtless doing. But if you’re only reflecting and you’re not acting, it can lead to passive mindlessness.”
I do this one well. The session was the action. This piece is the reflection.
Conscious and tribes
Change starts with you, so you have to be conscious. “But also you can’t do it alone and you need to work with others, hence the word tribes.”
I look for leaders with the skills I lack. Being conscious means knowing my gaps. The tribe fills them.
Curiosity and judgement
When I meet someone I see as a racist or a bigot, judgement wins. I walk away. I’m sure they won’t change my mind, and drawing them out will only make me think less of them. When I stood on the polling booth at Griffith, Tony Abbott was there all day. Every time he came near me, I went elsewhere.
I have two neighbours I admire, both very intelligent, and both of them stay in the room. One is the champion. At a dinner party, when someone says something half the room finds abhorrent, you can see she’s shocked. Then she says what the rest of us wish we could. The other is the diplomat. She sees the good in everyone and goes looking for it. She runs our community group. One of our other neighbours says she could run the UN.
Abdul El-Sayed, newly elected to the US Senate for Michigan, does the same on a public stage. Reporters from the left and the right, ridiculous questions and good ones: he answers them all, and I admire his answers. He knew race would be brutal and he stayed gracious.
Sameness and difference
“Politics is both a search for a sense of sameness across others and recognition that we are different,” Amanda said. One Nation, she argued, says “you can only do political life with people who are the same.”
So what does “the same” mean? I struggle with this one. One Nation leaves its two key words, “same” and “monoculture,” undefined. Is it skin colour? Is the idea that all white people are good and everyone else is bad? That’s a frightening thing to say. I’m a white Australian, and I have very little in common with Gina Rinehart or Pauline Hanson. We hold different values and come from different backgrounds.
Some of my champion’s closest friends hold very different political views. They stay close friends.
Penny Wong does it for a living. As Foreign Minister she brings people together across deep differences for the greater good. She’s gracious and knowledgeable, and I trust her. Her pragmatism and strength are skills I lack. If she moved to the lower house, I’d like to see her given a chance as Prime Minister.
Public and private
Amanda’s father studied at Macquarie University at night, on free education. That degree changed her family’s life, so when university fees went up, the public issue was personal for her.
Penny Wong is openly gay at the top of Australian public life. She’s a role model because her private and public lives sit together in full view.
Power over and power with
Amanda hears One Nation’s message as “Give up, give up, you can’t do it. I can do it for you.” Her answer: “When we defer to other political figures, to saviours or superheroes on either side of the political spectrum, we do ourselves a disservice and we do politics a disservice as well.”
After One Nation won the seat of Farrer in May, Angus Taylor promised to cap migration at the number of homes built each year and limit the NDIS to citizens. Hanson’s response: “They’ve been reading [our policies] very carefully because they’re desperate for some good ideas.” The major parties are deferring too. Labor may be heading the same way.
What I miss is courage. The last leader I saw take on big reforms was Julia Gillard: the NDIS, Gonski school funding, a carbon price and the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. I can’t name one thing the current Labor government has done that will stand as its legacy.
In 2020, 51% of Australians surveyed couldn’t name a single political achievement or a politician who had a positive impact that year.
Why leading is harder now
Paul Kelly believes the best leaders he covered would struggle today. The challenges are “the most severe in any that I’ve seen in the last 50 years covering politics”: a new economy, the energy transition, technological change, cultural conflict, a revolution in demography and the rise of China.
“I think governments don’t have the capacity at the moment to handle and manage the challenges the country faces.”
That makes me more gracious towards the people trying to lead through it. Anyone who puts their hand up for the greater good, knowing all that, has courage.
Amanda’s paradoxes showed me the skills I lack. Paul showed me the price leaders pay for using them.
References
- Amanda Tattersall and Paul Kelly in conversation with Kate Dezarnaulds, Berry Writers Festival, 2026
- Amanda Tattersall, Conscious Tribes: Thinking Differently About Making a Difference
- Paul Kelly, The Twilight of Exceptionalism: The Liberal and Conservative Era, Melbourne University Publishing, 2026
- The New Daily, “Hanson lashes ‘desperate’ coalition for ‘copying’ One Nation policy,” 14 May 2026
- Ipsos poll for the McKinnon Prize in Political Leadership, University of Melbourne, 2020
- NPR, “Democrat Abdul El-Sayed defeats Republican Mike Rogers in key Michigan Senate race,” 4 November 2026