By Parker McKenzie
A community political action group launched before the 2022 federal election is in it for the long run, having since incorporated with the aim of continuing to build towards electing a community independent candidate in the Casey electorate.
Voices for Casey — formerly known as Voices of Casey —hosted an engagement and participation in democracy forum on Saturday 3 December from Karwarra Australian Native Botanic Garden in Kalorama.
Inaugural President Dr Ani Wierenga, a Doctor of Philosophy and an academic coordinator at Melbourne University, said she became involved in the community organisation during the 2021 federal election.
“My partner and I had got together but realised we voted in the opposite direction. With the federal election coming up we were likely going to cancel each other’s votes out, which was a fairly unsatisfactory situation,” she said.
“We came to voices through the election and getting involved quite heavily with a group of highly committed, highly entertaining and beautiful people who had some very similar values. We cared about the community and the kind of futures we were building for and with all our generations.”
Voices groups helped propel several independent candidates to federal parliament, including Monique Ryan in Kooyong. Voices for Casey held its inaugural AGM on Wednesday 16 November, where it elected its first board, including Dr Wierenga, for the next 12 months.
Former independent candidate for Casey Claire Ferres Miles, who was endorsed by Voices of Casey during the 2021 federal election and has joined the organisation as a regular member, said she learned there was a huge appetite within the community for a positive conversation about democracy.
“How do people more actively engage with their representatives at local state and federal level to express what’s important to them and the issues that they’d like to get solved?” she said.
“The Voices for Casey group is committed to community engagement and listening.”
Voices of Casey launched in January 2022 ahead of the May 21 federal election, hoping to emulate the successful campaign to elect independents in the federal seat of Indi. Ms Ferres Miles would go on to win 8.34 per cent of the first preference vote.
Ms Ferres Miles said the model is to empower more people in the community.
“The power sits with them, their vote is incredibly important and the community can make decisions about who they’d like to represent them, and that can be more actively involved,” she said.
“The quality of our democracy and the quality of our representation at all levels of government is directly related to the interests, appetite and engagement of the individual community members. The more we get involved, the more the quality will increase.”
Dr Wierenga said she has become increasingly concerned about the public “finding themselves in echo chambers.”
“When we listen to the media we like, we listen to the social media we like and we connect with the people who are a little like us, what we might lose in that space is our capacity to speak across those divides,” she said.
“It is actually about recognizing the humanity in each other and bringing kindness and curiosity to our conversations about politics, which may not be afforded so easily in other spaces.”
Voices for Casey will host an Ideas Workshop on the first Sunday in March, with a venue to be announced, with a focus on “listening to better understand the concerns of the community, then working together on issues people care about,” and learning more about the democratic process.
