23 August

I watched (livestream) the meet the candidates session at the RSL club this week, for the local elections. Many repeated the line often that there needs to be more ‘consultation’ with the community. The thing as a governance person I want to warn the actual community about, is to not mistake social media groups, for ‘the community’. Social media groups are very good at generating fast visibility, and often speak as if they are the community. They absolutely aren’t. We saw the same thing with Covid lockdowns. The protests against those were driven by a tiny number of Australians. But they made a lot of loud noise, and that fooled politicians and others into thinking that was the voice of the community. Many of these groups have extreme views, which they hide from members. Many are sponsored and organised by extreme organisations overseas. For example some of our prominent local FB groups have clear ties to the Trump political movement in the US. Some are organised by secret services in Iran, Russia, China and North Korea, to disrupt Western democracies.