By Callum Ludwig
Buoyed by potential funding from Climate 200 and confirmed funding from Huddle, the Voices 4 Casey group is continuing its journey towards the 2025 Federal election.
Community members came together at the Micawber Tavern in Belgrave on Thursday 23 May for their ‘Launch the Bird’ event to ‘give flight’ to their election campaign.
Voices 4 Casey President Dr Ani Wierenga said both the financial and community support for the group is really exciting.
“I think what stands out is a pattern of grassroots support and interest in people getting together and talking about what matters for ordinary people in communities and elevating those issues into being part of the conversation,” she said.
“It’s not just about who sits in Canberra but it’s also about how do we represent local issues in every level of government, how do we represent the concerns of everyday people and amplify those voices and how do we have better dialogue with our representatives at every level.”
The Launch the Bird event marked the start of the group’s ‘Kitchen Table Conversations’ strategy, where they will aim to send surveys or postcards to as many houses across the electorate as they can.
Dr Wierenga said it’s part of their listening process which is beginning to form an energetic buzz.
“It’s about drawing people together for conversations about what they appreciate about living here and what matters to them, we find that in these conversations, people particularly resonate towards particular issues and our hope would be to form working groups around those issues,” she said.
“We’re early in our listening process at the moment but what we know is that the issues are different for the different towns across Casey, we’ve got the hills, we’ve got suburbs, we’ve got the agricultural areas and we’ve got the areas out into the bush so there’s a whole lot of diversity there,”
“We’re hoping to do some nuanced listening and to be able to bring some of the different sets of issues to work on for these groups, and we know that in there we need to be keeping our local media abreast of what we’re discovering so we’re thinking through the process of how we check on the pulse in different areas and dig more deeply into that.”
While the Voices 4 Casey has started, the group are also awaiting the draft decision from the Australian Electoral Commission’s Victorian Federal Redistribution, especially as the Australian Labor Party has proposed the seat of Casey be the one that is abolished as redistributed to other electorates.
Voices 4 Casey did make a submission as part of the process that should Casey be retained, it be renamed ‘Barak’ after William Barak, a sentiment shared by a number of other local submitters.
Dr Wierenga said regardless of what happens, the listening process is going to be relevant no matter what form the electoral boundaries take.
“We’re in that interesting space where east of Melbourne, electoral boundaries may change and so we’re holding decisions until the point where we hear the AEC and what it’s doing,” she said.
“Tonight (at the Launch the Bird event), we’re gathering key connections and volunteers, we will be meeting more people and we expect to be able to more visibly come in front of people with events that they can be involved in and from there we hope to meet people who’d like to get to know more about the Voices movement.”
Voices 4 Casey already has a number of events and appearances coming up:
Kitchen Table Conversations at the Monbulk and Belgrave libraries will be held on Wednesday 29 May and Monday 3 June respectively, both from 7pm to 9pm.
The group will have a Healesville Market Stall on Sunday 2 June, at the Belgrave Big Dreams Market on Sunday 9 June and at the Upwey Market on Sunday 23 June.
Another Launch the Bird event is in the works and set to be held in Healesville.
Dr Wierenga said 35 attendees came to the first edition of Launch the Bird.
“On the night, Voices 4 Casey received more than 16 new offers to volunteer in our 2024 Listening Campaign,” she said.
“One of the most delightful things was seeing people embrace the ways they can contribute to the 2024 Listening Campaign. from hosting, inviting, helping to lead in kitchen table conversations and sharing the survey across the community.”
Through funding from Huddle, Voices 4 Casey has also been able to bring on a Community Engagement Coordinator for their campaign.
Casey residents are also welcomed to share their thoughts with the group via their online survey at: research.net/r/V4C15.
