ESTHER:   Here we go.  

MARK:   Very good. 

ESTHER:   All right.  Welcome.  Good afternoon everyone.  Special good afternoon to everyone who is in Melbourne or Victoria, somewhere near where I am here on the lands of the Boon Wurrung and Woiwurrung people of the Kulin nation.  It's, yeah, big hugs to all of us after the news today.  Hopefully everyone supporting each other and doing all the right things so we can stay safe and look after each other.  I can see people starting to come in.  Please, as you come in, let us know using the chat where you are, what country you're on so that we can get to know ‑ there's a dozen or so of us here so far.  We've also got Penelope Benton, our general manager, is on the chat.  And I can see also ‑ yes, a few people coming in, a few people typing.  There is also, as ever, everyone, our session is being recorded and the recording and the transcription will be available tomorrow.  There's also being live captioned.  Hello again to Helen, our captioner, who is in Brisbane, and Penelope has posted the link to the live captioning which I just pinned to the top of the chat there, so you can click on that any time and our words will appear as though by magic, with thanks to Helen, and often if the internet connection is not great, it is a good thing to just be able to pop open and see all of that appear.  Hello, Renyu Wu again from Taiwan.  Shelley ‑ hello, Susan, from the Melbourne prize.  How lovely to see everyone.  Nice to see you again.  Great to see people coming in.  As Penelope has noted in the top of the chat there this is week 14 of the NAVA Advocacy Program, called Insights from the Inside this week.  We've had ‑ I'm going to try sharing the screen.  Hopefully this will work well.  Here is our program for this little chunk, these few weeks, because we've had our first weeks looking at arts issues with some great guests including our Arts Day on the Hill artists from last year.  So four weeks we're focused on advocating the arts.  Four weeks on understanding policy development with some leaders in that area, some really great thinkers and practitioners.  We then had four weeks on understanding the media so that we're really doing that kind of comprehensive approach to advocacy, looking at the issues, looking at policy development, looking at media engagement, and now four weeks on understanding the politics.  Sessions on political engagement, how to meet with a politician, and then getting ready for Arts Day on the Hill on 12 August.  

Now, I'm just going to turn that off.  For those who will recall that several times in the last couple of months that I've been really concerned that my internet was going to fall through because I kept getting that warning saying it was unstable, you will be delighted to hear it was upgraded this morning.  And thanks to the good people of the internet Gods, I'm now flying.  So we're going to be fine, thank goodness.  So today's session, some Insights from the Inside, asking those questions about what is that relationship between political strategy, between public sentiment and policy.  What's the connection between those various ways that parliamentarians make decisions, the advice they get and the strategists that work with them.  And our guest today ‑ and I'm delighted that he is here to join us ‑ is Mark Textor from Crosby Textor.  Mark and I have had some great conversations for many, many years about a whole range of the things that drive our passions, in particular around arts and creativity but also around a whole lot of other things.  Mark, welcome.  

MARK:   Thank you.  Great to be here. 

ESTHER:   Good to have you join us.  I can see several others joining us.  There is Michaela from the UK.  Very early in the morning there.  Always delighted to see Michaela.  Anna from western Victoria.  And Shelley yes, of course.  Yes.  Yes.  So many things to talk about with Mark.  I know everyone is going to have lots of questions.  Mark is going to join us for an hour, up until 5, and then we will go into the workshop session as part of our weekly program.  

So Mark, tell me, first of all, what led you to where you are today?  What background, what interests and roles, and so on, took you to where you are with Crosby Textor today?  

MARK:   Well, we ‑ I was ‑ I got into politics and polling by accident or happenstance.  I was an econometrician with the Australian Bureau of Statistics working on the house of expenditure survey in which people keep four weeks of diaries about every single thing they purchase including a ‑ ‑ ‑ 

ESTHER:   How fascinating. 

MARK:   You know, everything in their basket and every single thing they earn.  And that's designed to work out what should be in the CPI, consumer price index, to work out what people buy so we can price it properly and it's done every four years.  Very controversial study.  7,000 people have to fill in a diary every day for four weeks or so about every single thing they purchase.  So I had enough of that, being abused by respondents and ended up working for the Northern Territory government as an economist in the chief Minister's office helping to do trade offset deals with the Indonesians to value the value of certain trade concessions, cattle versus other things.  And then they had an election and they wanted to know whether I knew how to poll, and conduct polling.  Well, I didn't, actually. 

ESTHER:   As it turns out. 

MARK:   So I read some books.  And one by a famous Democrat, she had a self‑help guide to advocacy like yours.  So I read that and then invented a statistical system and telephone system to poll, and that next election where I was a pollster and strategist was a big success.  The then government was returned with an increased majority.  I was hired by political entities around Australia and ended up working for John Howard in 1996 as his pollster and then got into the big leagues, I suppose you would call it, that way.  But I never intended to get into the politics and indeed had no interest.  I wasn't a student activist.  I wasn't in any clubs.  So I was reluctant appointee.  

ESTHER:   Do you know, that's fascinating for a number of reasons.  First of all for the stats.  I remember as an economics student in high school learning about that study and the basket of goods, and how ‑ ‑ ‑ 

MARK:   Basket of goods. 

ESTHER:   How do you identify what a basket is, you know, in terms of ‑ ‑ ‑ 

MARK:   You can identify art purchases in the household expenditure survey if you wanted to, if you go into the detail.  You can actually work out how much Australians spend on art, art supplies in general.  So I commend it ‑ ‑ ‑ 

ESTHER:   Mmm. 

MARK:   ‑ ‑ ‑ for your participants. 

ESTHER:   I am also scribbling a note about that.  I'm fascinated by what you're saying you hadn't been a political person.  Last week our guest was Nicholas Pickard who is director of public affairs at APRA AMCOS.  He gave a similar story not in terms of the specifics of where you come from but also having been political got into it kind of indirectly accidentally.  And though for you it's very much that focus on data and what data can tell us. 

MARK:   Data and human decision‑making processes.  It's the combination of going deep and wide.  So if you can imagine a T.  So the why at the top of the T is public opinion polling, you know, numbers attached to either marginal seats in whatever country you're polling in.  We're worldwide so we poll in a number of countries, but, you know, how many ‑ what percentage of the population or what percentage of women or what percentage of the indigenous Australians think of particular things, you know, constitutional recognition, the republic, the state of the economy, COVID response.  So you attach numbers to satisfaction about things.  So you know how many people are thinking certain things.  But, more importantly, in terms of the art of persuasion you have to understand how people think rather than what they think.  And that way you can be predictive.  So if you ‑ you know, it's rather like understanding your friends.  You can ‑ you can quote statistics about them to describe them to people or you can tell others how that person tends to think, how they process information, what they find important, what's important in their lives beyond the issue you're speaking to them about at that moment, and so you get the contextual arguments, and you also know their emotional states, that is, you know, what rules the decision‑making process when they're making a decision about a product or about whether to support your community, or whether to support a certain political party or not.  You know, what dominates ‑ what other emotional factors dominate.  And there are about 25, for example, there are about 25... that dominate decision‑making in the public domain.  There's self‑esteem, a sense of national pride, concern for future generations which is tremendously important, for example, on the environment, a sense of excitement, a sense of personal fulfilment.  All these things drive decision‑making ultimately and it's to those values that we try and understand how people are oriented before we understand how they are thinking about a particular issue.  

And that's really the difference between internal, you know, and private pollsters.  We're more mass psychologists than we are number counters.  We're very accurate.  I think at the last election our numbers were plus or minus 0.1 off or something like that, and generally not very far off.  We tend to use much more advanced techniques than what the polls you see in the public are.  We tend to do more sample, we tend to sample more frequently.  We tend to be more accurate in terms of election prediction outcomes because we sample marginal seats rather than the whole nation, and we do mixed modal.  For example, we would, you know, depending on the audience either go online ‑ we use landlines if they're older Australians, sometimes we use mobiles.  So we're not so dependent on a particular methodology for the neatness of describing it to a newspaper article.  So, you know, what we do is actually a lot different in terms of the polling part of the strategy, because essentially each campaign is constructed in three ways.  There's two lots of threes that are important in campaigns.  The first is the structure of the campaign which is before you make decisions about how you effect government decision‑making you've got to understand both the audience they're responsible to, that is the voters because they will always orient themselves to them, and that's important to do not only to understand what they're hearing back but to also break down a few myths because we live in a world not of perceptions but of perceptions of perceptions.  So every night if you watch Sky After Dark or ABC The Drum ‑ God help you if you listen to either ‑ you might ‑ you might get a particular view of those people's views, of people's views.  That's a third part derivative, third stage derivative.  It's better to understand people because there's a lot of myths.  There's a lot of people telling you what people think but there's not a lot of people measuring what people think.  Not deeply, apart from, you know, the odd published polls.  There's not a lot of it.  

So the first thing you will find is there's a lot of myth making about public opinion.  Oh, the art sector is unpopular or it's irrelevant or they don't like this or they do like this or they support a republic or they don't.  A lot of that is superficial analysis.  It's important when you're having conversations with grown ups about your observations about Australian life and Australian thinking are more insightful than the people who would attack you because you give them something in those insights to understand the nature of things.  

So there's the research first.  Then there's formulated strategy.  So if you're going to be in a fight, you know, or a battle or a program to influence politicians, write down the strategy first.  You know, who is the target audience.  What are they thinking on what basis are they making their decisions.  Who is influential upon them?  What else is going on in that decision‑maker's life that could be relevant to what we're doing, financial, you know, career, other things.  And then at what stage do we time all those things and what budget should be applied to each one of those stages.  And then, of course, there's the results part which is to what extent are we succeeding or not, as the third part, and how do we just strategy.  

Then the other three‑part, you know, trip to understanding how to influence and campaign is there's only ever three audiences.  The first is ‑ and they are swing based, swing and ante.  And, you know, virtually all campaigns are about reinforcing your base to either, you know, get funding or to get crucial resources or those base ‑ your base are the activists who go out into the community and talk to their neighbours and friends and people, you know, at the coffee shops and whatever.  And then they influence the swing group because ultimately you want to change opinions, you want to consolidate any support you have amongst the swing if it's ‑ you know, if it's swingable, or if they don't support you, you want to change their mind.  And then you've got the antes who might mutualise, either on base that you take them online or to make sure that, you know, their positions don't gain any momentum.  But also in doing that, you know, most of the time keep the swing in mind because a lot of campaigners get in the semi‑defensive position and believe a campaign is only answering the worst of the accusation of your opponents.  When that happens, typically campaigns sound very defensive and you fail to extenuate the positive which ultimately motivates people.  In your sector there are many positives.  For example, if you went out today and say, "Look, you know, we're not all these things", all you're doing is producing a catalogue of sins.  And, you know, I wrote a piece on this because I've been heavily involved in, for example, the indigenous space for a very long period of time and working with a bunch of indigenous leaders now on constitutional recognition that you may have read about in various newspapers recently.  But, you know, one of the things that is true, for example, about, you know, about the indigenous community and the marvellous contribution they make to Australian culture and life is that too often the media portrays them through a catalogue of bad stories rather than a representation of the amazing diversity of their contributions.  And, you know, in law, in art, in science and in a range of areas, and, you know, it's more than a catalogue of woes.  That's a good example of how you shouldn't just address your negative, you should find something positive to say and it's generally the research that does that.  And then, of course, how you present these arguments through the construction of a narrative, how you time them with politicians, is then some tricks of the trade in there.  One is, for example, just as a conversation starter, you know, everyone loves to go to Canberra, and if, you know, politics is Hollywood for ugly people that's where all the ugly people go, and usually it's a vanity trip.  They like to go to Canberra, they get seen at Aussies they go home to wives, husbands or boyfriends and say, "I told the Minister this and I was very important."  And they strut around like maniacs and they look foolish.  The best way to see a Minister is to see them outside of Canberra when they've got a bit more time and not having divisions every five seconds, they're more concentrated and can think more deeply about your issues.  And you can bring your local representation as well. 

ESTHER:   I'm so glad you said that ‑ ‑ ‑ 

MARK:   I haven't been there for years. 

ESTHER:   Yes. 

MARK:   I avoid the place like the plague. 

ESTHER:   This has been a thing a lot of our speakers has really emphasised over the weeks, not just to escape that busyness in Canberra but also of course we need to be able to engage with politicians locally in their electorates, that's where they're most motivated, most passionately interested.  They want to get to know, they want to be invited to openings to studios and so on.  So, yeah, I'm really glad ‑ ‑ ‑ 

MARK:   Well, you think not the visual arts but you think about the performing arts ‑ I know there's an overlap in your group of industries because there are some visual performed arts, I suppose, but, you know, in the ‑ in the performing arts, for example, you know, the ‑ often when the performing arts want to talk about the contribution to the economy, they get the big wigs out, the big names.  You know, the big stars, the big execs, the big studio people out.  But, you know, they're just the equivalent of a bank being with a bank CEO and not the branch manager who is trusted, they're the equivalent of a mining CEO going to Canberra and not Wendy the lab scientist who works on all content who is much more interesting and much more engaging and much more local and more real.  I know when we were involved in the mining industry campaign against Kevin Rudd's mining industry tax which we were the strategists and pollsters on, one of the things we did was make sure that mine workers and people on the front line were the representatives in Canberra and the offices, not, you know, blokes in suits.  Because (1) they're boring and (2) they don't tell, you know, stories in the right way.  And if you talk about, say, the performing arts rather than the visual art ‑ in terms of the contribution, it would be better off, you know, bringing to Canberra or a local office the woman who runs a logistics service in support of performing arts, or, you know, a transportation company 60 per cent of whose business comes from performance art and they go to the local members office and say, "Hey, 20 people are dependent on this community", to make that hyperlocal is tremendously important because it's real.  There's not the cynicism ‑ ‑ ‑ 

ESTHER:   Yeah.  People in visual arts touring people in regional galleries that you and I have spoken about before, talking about the important ‑ ‑ ‑ 

MARK:   Every country town has a gallery. 

ESTHER:   Yes. 

MARK:   Not only every country town has a gallery, the gallery is tip top number one in all the local literature talking about the town.  Crook world ‑ you know, my nearest, you know, the local galleries and the local arts and slash arts shops are tremendously important as are the festivals.  You will find in those country areas a lot of people have retreated from the city to concentrate on their art and their passion.  It's always best to harness that because it overcomes that terrible thing that is so terrible in modern campaigning which is cynicism. 

ESTHER:   Yeah.  Yeah.  Now, Mark, you have just presented so much which we're going to drill into because I know everyone is going to have lots of questions and I've got lots of questions.  Let's go back towards the beginning when you were describing the difference between the detail forensic and psychological work that you do, and the more superficial work of polling that tends to be reported.  So something that has been discussed by the media in Australia for probably the last 10 years, but more so in the last five years, is that polling has become less and less reliable, this notion that, you know, the same 1200 people are at home on a week night to answer their landline and answer two or three very basic questions, and then, you know, being very surprised when the outcome is not what the polls predicted.  But then, of course, there's that issue where those polling ‑ a lot of those more superficial phone polls are owned by the newspaper who is doing the reporting often and so there's that thing, "Okay, perhaps questions are being asked that are going to achieve headlines", whereas your work you have a deep, long‑term relationship with the party that you're working with, you're looking at, as you say, the things that motivate people to think differently.  

What's the difference between specifically going into maybe some of the questions that are asked, the difference between the polling that you do to understand public sentiment and some of that more superficial polling?  

MARK:   Well, you know, you can read a poll, for example, in the newspapers ‑ and for what they do they're fine.  You know, there's budgetary issues these days, but they will tell you nothing about if you were a stranger it would tell you nothing about the way Australians think.  That's the reality.  That's the simplest way I can explain it.  You can read a number.  It's like saying, look, you know, describing your local street.  This is what published polling does.  It describes your local street by saying there's 13 houses in that street.  There's 2.5, you know, people per household in that street.  It's medium income.  They tend to buy Mazdas, and they tend to be 60 per cent Liberal voters.  You actually know nothing about the people in that street.  Nothing.  So you might ‑ you might ‑ you don't know about the dynamics of that street, you don't know about the friendships, you don't know the basis on which those people make decisions or what's important to them.  You know nothing.  Unless you actually go to that street and you speak to them and have a long conversation.  So generally, in sophisticated modern party political and corporate research, there's really three phases, there's a sort of exploratory phase which is to understand people's motivations.  You know, what is important to them at the moment;  what is the context, what are you trying to capture.  The context might be deep uneasy about the state of the world, a desire and a passion to have a better world, a need to be recognised, a desire for more security in their lives, financial or otherwise.  All these things.  In fact, I've got a favourite saying which is, you know, there's no such thing as family values, only things that are valued by family, a sense of self‑esteem, enlightenment, empowerment that comes from good parenting and so forth.  And those are the things that drive behaviours.  What we try and do is run depth interviews and focus groups which are collections of 10 people, less so more triads these days, groups of three and four, so we understand what's going on in their lives.  Any good doctor, for example, won't sit there and measure heartbeat.  They will try and understand what's been going on in your life lately to lead you to getting sick.  They will have to understand your life and your lifestyle in order to say, "Hey, it looks like you've been on the sauce too much or you haven't been doing enough exercise, haven't been out in the sun."  All these sorts of things.  They have to understand you in order to understand the statistics of your heartbeat and everything else.  That's the best analogy I can give.  So you actually have to sit down and listen to people.  And then once we do that and we explore their lives we then try to understand really five things.  They get to the heart of all opinion.  The first is awareness of an issue that you're trying to get to.  Is it part of their lives or not?  Do they ‑ have they even heard of this thing?  And then understanding.  So they may have heard of something or they may not have heard of something but when you prompt them of it they will have certain understandings or misunderstandings.  So I often say, you know, I hate that word "educate".  I would rather make people understand than educate.  Because you can tell people stuff but do they really understand it.  Have they processed it in the way that is relevant and good.  So there's awareness, understanding, and then there's importance to self.  So they might be aware of something, they might completely understand what you're saying at a rational level.  But they're just not important to their lives.  It's just like emotionally unattached.  They just go, "Yeah, that's terrible.  Pass the beer nuts."  Right?  No emotional engagement and, therefore, motivation.  But there's ways to get it emotionally motivated.  And we look at that.  Like what other things in their lives that we can link to that that it's important.  

And then the next thing is ‑ so awareness, understanding, personal relevance, personal emotional relevance, and then differentiation.  That is, you're always in competition.  Even if you don't have direct competition ‑ and I'm certain the art sector doesn't apart from a mad right wingers but you do have competition in terms of attention.  So we try and understand the competitive forces.  So what is leading people not to listen to you, what are the alternative arguments, and then we test the alternative arguments to the alternative arguments.  So what are your arguments to their arguments, we tease those out.  So that's awareness, understanding, importance to self emotionally, the differentiation, what you're good at versus what they're good at.  What are your equities.  What will they believe you in respect to your issues above all others including the government.  What's your strongest point.  Competitive equity.  That's differentiation.  The last thing is execution.  They can understand something, they are aware of something, understand it, thirdly be emotionally engaged, fourthly they can understand that you have certain strengths but fifthly, the language might be completely inappropriate.  They might ‑ you just might be talking gobbledegook.  This is rather like the problem with a house, you know, you've built the house, it's perfect but you just painted it the wrong colour.  If you change the colour it will be fine.  So there's that last bit which is everyone sort of gets into in politics which is the wordsmithing and that sort of stuff.  Really that comes last.  Unless you get the structure of the house right, if wordsmithing is painting it doesn't matter what you paint it, if the structure is wrong, it doesn't accommodate the needs of the individual.  

So that's what we tend to look at.  Particularly with the last part, the sort of competitive parts that we use very advanced quantitative techniques and that involves 10s of thousands of examples in marginal seats or swing areas if it's a commercial issue with swing consumers, and then we run very sophisticated regression analysis where we actually quantitatively test the arguments and we see not which arguments people agree with.  That's not what we're actually interested in.  We test which arguments have greatest bending power.  In motor sport they call this torque.  What has the greatest way if you're in front to consolidate opinions.  And we do that by some quite sophisticated methodological techniques.  We're completely different from published polling. 

ESTHER:   You can't be more different. 

MARK:   It's just habit.  I, you know, in the 11 odd years I was John Howard's pollster and strategist I never read a poll.  Never read a published poll.  Once. 

ESTHER:   You're better off without them.  And certainly a lot of people advocate for not reporting them because it's so easy you just write a story that says this number was this and this number was that without going into that detail.  Let's go into the one ‑ ‑ ‑ 

MARK:   It just doesn't tell you much. 

ESTHER:   No, that's right.  That's right.  But it's very ‑ it's a very easy column to write if you're a journalist who is on a deadline.  So, yeah, it's a shame. 

MARK:   It's ‑ they are legitimate in that you have got to have some sense of what's broadly been popular or not but it's too ‑ you know, there's not enough data often to make those conclusions, and often the statistical shifts are so small, you know, a sample of a thousand. 

ESTHER:   Yes.  I really wish there was a practice ‑ ‑ ‑ 

MARK:   They're not statistically significant. 

ESTHER:   I wish there was a best practice of always reporting the sample size when things like that are reported because that would be a huge shift.  Can I come back to what you were saying about language. 

MARK:   Yes. 

ESTHER:   Because we are just over the halfway mark and still so much to ask you.  Let's go back to what you were just saying about language and kind of understanding that getting that right, not wanting to educate but wanting to understand.  And something that we've seen ‑ I think one of the things that often plagues us in the arts is that perception that the arts is elitist as opposed to something that's everyone is involved with and engages with all the time.  We've noticed in the last little while the Prime Minister has become quite directly engaged with the package that was recently announced and that event with Guy Sebastian and others and really bringing out the arts workers who are in the background, that people don't often get to see.  Like you were saying, you know, who do you bring to that meeting, what's the story, what's the language that they're told.  And we've all been struck by the Prime Minister's use of that focus on tradies as a way of kind of connecting to a different or broader group of people.  Then on the downside, you know, the people who work at tradies are actually in a whole different field to arts workers and arts workers are also trade professionals.  So, you know, that's a nuanced discussion that happened within the arts. 

MARK:   I think you will find some of them are secret artists. 

ESTHER:   Exactly.  A lot of producers, a lot of installers, and so on.  But tell us about, you know, over the years we've talked about different ways of, you know, that arts policy in an unwritten way becomes important to the coalition at different times.  And this has been a rare moment where we've had the Prime Minister directly engaged in an announcement and in responses, I guess, to the package and what it's meant and so on.  How important was it to find a language, a vocabulary that the Prime Minister was going to be interested in and comfortable with, but also to engage with the general public that he prioritises and wants to reach?  

MARK:   Well, I think there's two questions there which is, you know, who are you appealing there.  And my view about politics is that it's a bit like a good curry in that ‑ in that you have to have things in there that are although they're uncomfortable or a bit new or a bit strange, sort of add to the next of your narrative just to keep it fresh.  And, you know, certainly that's one of the equities of the sort of arts thing which is it's just ‑ it's not so different.  It's weird, but it's refreshing to see because you do have to refresh.  You keep talking about the same stuff, people are going to turn off.  And you do need to show, you know, a range of ‑ you do need to show you're discriminatingly concerning in relation to matters and you're not one toned.  So even though the spicy eggplant in the Thai beef curry might be sour ‑ it's like McDonald's you don't like the pickle and when you take it out it's boring, even though you don't like the pickle.  Remember if you're non‑conformist in terms of typical political strategy as you might be in the arts, that there are other roles you can play.  So you don't pretend to be, you know, some sort of group that would typically be of support to a government but it doesn't mean that in terms of a narrative you can't add something in terms of news worthiness.  Getting a story up at the moment that's not about COVID is pretty hard. 

ESTHER:   Yes.  

MARK:   And so, you know, if you talk about the economy, that's pretty hard as well because that's been done.  You know, half of it has shut down.  So when you talk about an arts announcement or getting some artists in that are a little bit different, you know, you celebrate what is your equity, which is, you know, we're not the usual suspects but even then you can't make assumptions either about our view on life our entrepreneurship.  The other thing of course about the arts industry as everyone on the call knows is that if any group of people understands these larger liberal idea of making every buck go further it's the arts industry you know, because I've never seen a sort of rampant over‑spending artist in my life.  You know, they're all ‑ they're all pretty efficient with their money because they have to be because it's precious.  And, you know, so there's all sorts of interesting and new bits that you can add to that narrative that would be of interest and appealing to a politician because it gives them something new to say.  You know, there's that terrible phrase announceable.  Not saying that's why the Prime Minister did it, but understand that there is a requirement to fill that void of content, you know, with something that's not rugby league scandal or, you know, to use another business ‑ another business is going over because of COVID.  I mean, it's important but we're kind of pretty much aware that we're all pretty rogered right now.  Let's have something new and joyful.  If not joyful at a different angle.  You know, that's part of that, the newsworthiness of the announcement. 

ESTHER:   Yeah, yeah. 

MARK:   Also remember ‑ ‑ ‑ 

ESTHER:   That links to a question ‑ ‑ ‑ 

MARK:   Remember my observation about the base. 

ESTHER:   Yes. 

MARK:   This is misunderstood.  So the ridiculous culture war things in the media about right wing versus left wing.  Remember the liberal donor base are people who love art.  They're reasonably wealthy people.  What do they do?  They buy and consume art.  They encourage their children to be artists, they appreciate art in all its forms generally, you will find.  We're talking sort of the much ‑ you know, they're much reliant but let's use the North Shore Sydney as an example.  Go to any home and, you know, there's a preponderance of art in there and there's certainly an appreciation of art.  So it's sort of cradle to the grave staff.  Introduced to art when they're small when they're first starting their careers they wish the money to buy some, if they're not artists they wish they were, then later on in life they enjoy it.  

ESTHER:   Yes.  Yes. 

MARK:   To try and use that to make it not just a consumer issue but also a political issue is something that would be interesting to play with.  

ESTHER:   Well, let's think about it a bit now because if it's important ‑ if we've got voters, people committed to the party's principles who are donors, who are collectors, if it's absolutely a liberal value that artists are entrepreneurial or exceptionally good with money, and so on but where is that gap with the fact the arts does mean so much to so many people but that, you know, it's not prioritised in terms of policy or broader kinds of funding commitment, do you think?  Is it about going back to that sense that, you know, the arts is perceived as elitist?  If we go back to the swing, the base and the ante, where do you think the arts sits for a lot of the colleagues in the party?  

MARK:   I think as a ‑ as a political label it's problematic.  You know, you used to have a Y in front of it in all the old cartoons, the yarts community.  Renewing the brand ‑ I don't mean the physical brand, I mean the brand as in identity in people's heads, that it's enriched again and it's not cliched, that it's that wonderful diversity of people in community halls, you know, painting their terrible paintings, or, you know, the MP knowing that there's a group of artists in, you know, in their areas.  I mean, there's areas outside of Adelaide wherever single artist out there would be, you know, a secret closet Liberal, usually the better performing ones.  But so there's a lot of interaction with those ‑ with those people.  And so if you allow it to be the sort of cliche, it will be a cliche.  And I suppose the challenge is always to make sure you have sufficient resources and contact to remind decision‑makers that there's quite a vibrant community and diverse, you know, in both its views about issues and in terms of its approach to life and in terms of its depth.  You know, either in terms of local impact and sales or, you know, ancillary industries or supportive event industries.  You know, the event industry ‑ most of the events industry would love more arts shows and sales at the moment. 

ESTHER:   They certainly would. 

MARK:   ‑ ‑ ‑ to bring in.  My worry would be on your behalf that, you know, that without sufficient mixing of kind of messages ‑ sorry, without sufficient enrichment of messages that ‑ yes, you do become a cliche. 

ESTHER:   Yes. 

MARK:   The dilemma is don't let yourself be one.  It's always difficult, though, because we say in politics you can run a bad campaign with money, but you can't run a good one without it.  So you do have to have a minimum ‑ a minimal level of resources in order to, you know, properly bring those sorts of strategies to the fore. 

ESTHER:   Absolutely.  Now, we've got a number of questions coming in from everyone.  First just on that public perception issue, question from Felicity Blake.  Do Australians love art but hate artists, as in are artists considered wankers and dole bludgers.  If you think about things that come up in public opinion.  Is that an issue, that Australians love art but hate artists. 

MARK:   They would probably hate a number of them but we all hate someone, don't we?  I think give them sufficient diversity, give them someone to love, you know.  You know, all my dad's friends were artists.  You know, so I know a great number of artists.  My male forbears were all sculpture artists.  You know, so you sort of dig into anyone's family history there's someone there.  I keep saying, you know, break through the stereotypes.  So my answer would be maybe but how are you ‑ my question to clients is always that might be the case.  It sounds like a bit of an issue.  What are you going to do to change it?  

ESTHER:   Yes. 

MARK:   So all get armed with, you know, stories of three or four friends like you who, you know, are atypical or even if they are typical are not the stereotype and think about ways of exposure to get them in front of people, the media, even the local media is tremendously important.  Remember there's all these local websites that have been created with the demise of digital ‑ printed newspapers that are desperate for content.  I mean, just desperate.  So you can ‑ you can give them stories of, you know, eight struggling well‑known local artists, and that cumulative effect on the political psyche when politicians read their online publication is something that no doubt will have a positive effect in the future.  So I don't ‑ ‑ ‑ 

ESTHER:   That local ‑ ‑ ‑ 

MARK:   I think the more ‑ the more likely, though, it's a good question, is that they switch off when they see a stereotype.  And that's not having a go at the arts community.  They do the same with anyone.  They switch off politicians when they see a political stereotype.  They switch off a football player when they go yeah, nah, yeah, nah.  But they switch off when there's a different sounding person, you know, with a bit of cognitive diversity, rather than ‑ rather than geodemographic diversity. 

ESTHER:   That makes a lot of sense.  Let's go to another question by Shelley Hinton there.  You mentioned about marginal seat polling earlier.  Shelley asks if mainly... how is that truly representative of the broader and specifically the arts community if your questions are arts focused.  I think that's possibly bringing two different things ‑ ‑ ‑ 

MARK:   Well, if, for example, you were having a lobbying campaign in order to somehow get concessions or extra funding to the arts community, any part of it ‑ let's call it the broader arts community, not just the visual arts ‑ you know, a number of things would typically occur there.  You know, sometimes you do polls for lobbying.  In other words, to break down myths.  For example, if you were concerned and it mightn't be a concern that, you know, there was a myth that everyone hated artists and you did a poll and they said, "No, the artist community local is very important to me" then you do a national representative poll to show a group of decision‑makers that the art community is not unpopular.  Very defensive but you might want to do that on occasion.  Whereas a marginal seat poll would be there to show the sort of political campaigning class that it's also true in the swing areas.  So it's not just coming from left wing Labor seats or blue ribbon seats all love the arts ‑ it tends to be middle ground ‑ but technically the answer is if you take a broader range of marginal seats it's pretty indicative of national opinion.  Probably 19 times out of 20, a broad range of marginal seats plus or minus 5 per cent on a pendulum ‑ as I said, actually 19.9 times out of 20 would be generally indicative of non‑marginal seat, you know, Australia‑wide opinion if you were taking it in Australia.  Bit different in some other countries.  Swing constituencies in the UK there's a specific London UK divide there.  You know, London is one country and the rest of the UK is another country, as your London people would be aware, and that was shown in the Brexit vote where basically London was remaining and everyone else was not in the Brexit vote so it depends on the country.  In Australia marginal seat polling I would say is almost always indicative of the national trend.  

ESTHER:   And, of course, marginal seats are ‑ you were saying earlier about needing to resource your campaigns, needing to actually have good money to take things seriously, political parties are, of course, also in the same boat, confidently fundraising and needing to think about where to spend their resources and marginal seats, of course, when you're looking at that pendulum, you know that there are seats that, you know, if the margin is just so massive you're probably going to spend less ‑ ‑ ‑ 

MARK:   They're not.  They don't spend money on safe seats. 

ESTHER:   Yes. 

MARK:   Political parties around the world really only, you know, spend money on safe ‑ on swing constituencies, call them seats, constituencies in the UK, writings in the ‑ in Canada, districts in the ‑ you know, in the UK.  You have to remember all these terms when you do these things.  But, yes, it ‑ yeah, the ‑ you know, 80 per cent of the resources go into 20 per cent of the seats.  It's the 80/20 rule, basically. 

ESTHER:   And it takes us back to what you said at the beginning, that your work isn't so much about just understanding what people think but it's about what influences decision‑making.  And so when you're looking at that ‑ at the swing, you're looking at people who are in a position where they're going to make a decision heading into the election as opposed to being a rusted on voter on either end and similarly you're also supporting decision‑making for politicians ‑ ‑ ‑ 

MARK:   Yes. 

ESTHER:   ‑ ‑ ‑ so that they're guiding ‑ it's that complexity of knowing what to ask, knowing where to ask it, and then that other end. 

MARK:   Depending what the blockage is, yes, so ‑ ‑ ‑ 

ESTHER:   Yes. 

MARK:   ‑ ‑ ‑ if it's genuinely open field, you know, we can shake the environment, then you do a bigger thoughtful piece.  Sometimes it's tactical where you're trying to get rid of a few myths in order to open the door, sometimes, you know ‑ and remember polling is only one part of the campaign.  You know, and ‑ you know, what I say about campaigning is, look, you know, a PR person will always recommend a bit of PR.  A lawyer will always want to sue someone.  A digital person will always want to do digital ads on Facebook, a direct mail person will want to send pamphlets out.  A grass roots campaigner will want to march in the streets and ‑ but a campaign is about which one of those resources works best with the target audience.  And you have to be what we call platform independent, depending on what the research shows and also what is tactically available.  What gives you the best bang for your buck for motivating your base and for, you know, persuading those swing audiences.  Even if they're elite audiences.  Even if they're, you know, just in Canberra, it's still the same analysis.  What technique will work best for them?  And there's never a blanket rule for that.  There's tricks of the trade like don't visit them in Canberra all the time and all that stuff we talked about, but generally, you know, you've got to think about your audience and, you know, what particular pressures they're under at that time.  And then basically customise.  And that's just a lot of work and foot work and thinking, which is the most important thing.  You know, just be thoughtful.  You know, the stereotype of lobbying is that it's brutal and everything else but generally the successful campaigns are nuanced.  They're very brutal in their simplicity and the power of their message. 

ESTHER:   And you've been very good at that over the years, some very simple ‑ ‑ ‑ 

MARK:   Got the votes and all that stuff. 

ESTHER:   Got the votes. 

MARK:   But I think ‑ I think with the arts community, the ‑ you know, trying to find a new side of the ‑ you know, of the creative space and expressing it in a new way ‑ because, you know, people get bored and they want to hear new things.  It's human nature.  So don't be boring.  And a lot of the things that, you know, in particular market segment or grouping thinks are interesting to them are not interesting but there may be something that you're doing that you might think is not interesting but is tremendously interesting to them.  Like even having numbers when you go visit about the number of artists, the number of art schools, number of activities, number of art shows in your area.  I mean, there should be a compendium of that for every single marginal seat. 

ESTHER:   We're going to talk about that in our workshop session after this.  Now, unsurprisingly, Mark, our hour has completely flown by.  We've got just a couple of minutes left.  So I will ask you one last question from the group which comes from Caz.  She says what is one thing you've learnt that has surprised you really from left of field.  One of those unexpected things that someone said or did that just shifted your whole approach to something?  

MARK:   I would ‑ it's a very good question.  I would say at a personal level ‑ and I've written a column on this about ‑ it's called Pick Up the Phone ‑ that I'm constantly surprised about how we imagine walls that don't exist. 

ESTHER:   Walls, did you say?  

MARK:   Walls, yeah.  And I often say to people, "Oh, so and so won't support us", and I just say, "Pick up the phone.  Call them.  Ask them for help."  And you would be surprised what happens.  And, you know, I got involved in the indigenous space, you know, 15 or so years ago ‑ it's more than that.  I'm getting old.  It must be 20.  Because a senior indigenous leader rang me up and said Tex, you seem to have been on the other side of this, can we have a chat.  I said that would be great.  I've been waiting for this.  A great relationship followed, because someone bothered to pick up the phone.  It should have been me.  It was Pat Dodson, actually.  It was a good question.  I would say that what surprised me is that the trick of bad people in politics is the manufacturing of division that simply doesn't exist.  And then they create this myth that something is unpopular or popular.  That's been the constant surprise for me.  At the moment, for example, a little plug, you know, you're talking about 60 per cent plus support for constitutional recognition.  No matter how you frame the question, right.  So it's not sensitive to the wording.  And yet a lot in the commentariat say it's very controversial. 

ESTHER:   No, it's not. 

MARK:   Republic not so much.  It would crash and burn if you did it right now.  But I would say if you had a referendum now ‑ one or two States might be dodgy, not even one ‑ maybe one at most but we would get up.  But, you see, people have to ‑ the elites themselves have to invent this thing.  So I think the worst thing any of us can do is to believe and hold ourselves back from getting up ‑ you know, from getting on the phone and calling someone you wouldn't normally call.  I do it all the time now as a result of that thing ‑ of what happened to me and I call someone who is allegedly supposed to be against something and I say, "Hey, mate, can we talk about this?"  And they usually say, "Yeah, why not?  Thanks for asking."  That's been the most surprising thing to me.  He goes, "What was I imagining?  I thought this person was terrible."  

ESTHER:   I'm so glad ‑ ‑ ‑ 

MARK:   So, you know, the world is a surprising place. 

ESTHER:   Even who, did you say?  

MARK:   Even you have talked to me. 

ESTHER:   Even me.  I should say to everyone Tex and I met more than 15 years ago when we had offices just one floor from one another, and then got talking about a range of things and our paths have kept crossing and being able to just call or text you ‑ ‑ ‑ 

MARK:   It must have been ‑ I was about to go off and help Boris for his first election, if you recall. 

ESTHER:   Yep.  Before Boris.  It was some time ago now.  And, yeah, to be able to have that sounding board has been incredibly important for me.  But you've just touched on something that is so important for all of us, which is, you know, getting on the phone and having the conversation, speaking also, you know, to your local MP, to other candidates.  They want to hear from you.  And in a country with, you know, a fairly small population compared to the rest of the world and a very concentrated media ownership, those divisions are actually a lot more stark than we actually think they are.  Huge thanks, Mark, for setting that out in such a detailed way.  We're going to be talking a great deal now about the whole psychology of what you do but it's great for you to spend an hour with us today. 

MARK:   Always a pleasure. 

ESTHER:   In that awkward way that we do online with the chat, please do the text‑based equivalent of thanking Mark with claps and thanks.  And in a little minute, Tex is going to hit the button and say bye.  But, yeah, thanks so much.  Really great chat. 

MARK:   Pleasure.  All the best with your workshop. 

ESTHER:   Thank you.  See you soon.  

MARK:   Bye. 

ESTHER:   Bye.  And lots of questions that are now still coming in for Mark.  We will see how many of those I can pass on to him in some other way.  And I know that a lot of you have asked a lot of really great questions that we just didn't get to.  If we compare Nicholas last week to Tex this week, we have more a kind of short, sharp answers as opposed to those really long detailed answers.  I've got to go back now ‑ thankfully we record and transcribe these ‑ there are a couple of those longer answers where Tex set out basically a whole campaign infrastructure in ways that are just enormously helpful in terms of the key terms around that strategy.  And as we were discussing, you know, over the weeks, it's so important that we hear from Labor and Liberal and Greens politicians and strategists and others.  So, yeah, really, really interesting to have all of that.  

Now, before we go into the workshop aspect of our session today where we will look at some political engagement based on what Tex has said but also based on our updated kit which is now on the website ‑ and, again, these sessions are free for everyone.  The kit, the advocacy kit that goes with the sessions are available for NAVA members only so we don't get in big, big trouble and not focusing, of course, on our membership.  As you know, as I've said many times, NAVA membership starts from just $7.50 a month which is cheaper than two coffees, you know, one for you and one for me.  And, of course, as you know, I don't drink coffee.  So that has just saved you even more money, right there.  

Now, I'm just going to scroll back and see which questions I've missed from everyone to see whether we can pick them up now.  And I'm sorry, a few of us are saying that the connection is not great today.  Although for some of us the audio is fine.  So, yes, apologies that the internet Gods are smiling on me today and apparently not for many of us.  Yvonne East is talking about living on the North Shore of Sydney, I'm assuming, and it would be great to see some of her neighbours have a deeper investment into the art that they purchase.  So talking about ideas to develop the emotional intellectual importance to self.  Yeah.  Oh, that's ‑ there are so many different kinds of critique and appreciation resources online.  But I would say Yvonne just have a chat, they're your literal neighbours.  Ask them what they invest in, ask them what their emotional response is.  You know, that conversation itself, I think, is a really important advocacy.  Scrolling down some more.  Yes, Anna Cordingley saying, yeah, we haven't had politicians who choose the arts as something they want to focus their advocacy on, Keating, of course, being the last in that very prominent way as Prime Minister, I think it has been quite important for Tony Burke, the arts were very important to George Brandis, the particular arts that Senator Brandis enjoyed were very important to him.  So I think that was also, you know, frustratingly ironically in terms of the damage that he did, he was, of course, absolutely passionate about the arts.  

Now, just scrolling down to see if I've missed any more questions.  Alex is asking about the three of the five campaign stages in terms of campaign preparation.  And what is it in Australia's arts and culture that people have emotional resonance with.  Yeah, I think he touched on that in a few different places but that would have been a great discussion to draw out as well.  And thank you to Penelope for posting the link to membership.  

And Caz points out also that asking questions, as Tex said, has always been a good connector and for Caz in the corporate world.  Yeah, I think often just, yeah, reluctant to get on the phone and ask the question.  Some of my most reliable and, you know, still to this day relationships with MPs who are Liberals and Nationals has been either I've rung them or they've rung me.  And, you know, it started as either one of us saying, "Look, I think you're going to disagree with me but just hear me out."  And by the end of the conversation we're in furious agreement and we're trying to work out how to bring others in the party on board.  

Now, I am going to turn on the ‑ switch to presentation mode and go to our updated handbook number 4, understanding the politics.  So please tell me if you're now seeing that on your screen.  And thank you to Penelope for posting the link there to free subscription and also to membership.  So hopefully you're now seeing the cover page for part 4 of the advocacy workshops handbook.  I will just wait to hear someone say that they can see that because sometimes there has been a bit of a delay.  Yes, you can.  Okay, wonderful.  So the story from here.  I just pressed the wrong button.  There we go.  This program, of course, has been our online version of something that we did in Canberra last year to support a range of advocates to develop skills together, and this year for all the obvious reasons, it's online, so that we can develop skills together, not just in a one‑off way, not just when something terrible happens, but in a way that lasts so that in one another we're nurturing a real commitment, long‑term, to the kind of ongoing advocacy that keeps making the arts an issue for decision‑makers.  

We started out looking at what's the state of the arts right now, what are some of the key issues, and these have certainly become exacerbated throughout this year, around issues of declining incomes, challenges in professional practice, upholding of standards.  And then we talked about advocacy as being something that presents your vision in a compelling way in the way that you would.  

And then if we look now at this structure, this one in particular here from the American strategist Bill Moyer and we look at the different focuses for a campaign focusing on citizens, on reformers, on rebels, on change agents and the way we focus in on this from the NAVA point of view.  This does very much align with a lot of what Mark was just saying.  There's ‑ and no doubt this touches on some of the questions that were asked, but what can you ‑ what can you see now in some of what Tex was just talking about, and this need to look at a particular focus at segments at the kinds of language that is used.  Who can remember an example of something that Tex was just describing.  You know, the difference between having to engage with policy‑makers, the challenges of reaching the media in particular ways, the segmenting of the public, and, you know, the challenge of focusing a message in a way that is really going to reach, you know, who you need for it to reach.  It's enormously challenging, especially when we're tight on resources.  But important to look at the specific aspects of what we can achieve both as individuals and as a group.  

We then looked at how we nurture local advocacy.  We looked at some of the specifics of a strategy, and this also goes into a lot of what Mark was just saying around the tools that we have at hand, the language that we use, particularly around emotion, and I'm, again, particularly delighted that Mark was emphasising having the local meetings, the local conversation, that story that is uniquely yours that doesn't pander to any kind of cliche.  

We talked about ‑ yes, there it is, the very brief history of arts policy that we touched on last week.  Which, yes, still delights me, a very useful tool when I look back on it.  It's been very popular.  The sense of an arts policy that is not written but is still something that is in effect.  And then through our chapter on policy and then going into the media, and now I'm going to skip ahead to the questions that we look at today, which are how do we engage with government.  

So our next week ‑ our guest next week is Helen O'Neil, who has also been a political adviser but she's also been the head of numerous peak bodies in the arts.  And we're going to go into the specifics of how do you plan a meeting with an MP.  And then we're going to look at some social media engagement as well.  

But let's have a look now at some of the structures that kind of underlie how we're going to engage with MPs and then we'll talk a bit about our plans for Arts Day on the Hill.  Thank you to Penelope for posting the link there to the Arts Day on the Hill event which is coming up on 12 August.  And that we are hoping that all of you will register for as advocates and that some of you might want to register for as media spokespeople as well.  

So although Parliament seems and is big and complex, we can kind of ‑ you know, here is Parliament House, just to show us exactly how big and complex it is ‑ there are a range of ways that any Parliamentary democracy goes out of its way to invite people to engage because they have to.  That's the basis of democracy.  There are government inquiries that we can submit to.  There are Parliamentary committees.  There's obviously voting.  There's engagement through the media.  There's, you know, relationships to nurture really, really long term.  I'm just noticing in the chat there, Gabriel has said, well, if the politicians will not be in Canberra having deferred the August session, will the Arts Day on the Hill date be changed?  No, it won't.  And so we won't actually be on that hill which is very frustrating, but what we will do is intensify an online engagement where we're going to connect and engage in a range of both focused social media conversations with MPs which you will all be doing but we will still be requesting meetings at the electorate level.  So it will be very similar, it's just that they will not be in Canberra.  It's really frustrating.  Until the Prime Minister's announcement that those weeks were going to be suspended, we've been looking at this week to week thinking okay how are we going to do this this year.  Because our aim is to achieve a critical mass of advocacy.  And to have that response among our community in the media and also with politicians.  So background now thinking, obviously, the world has taken a big sickie.  So we're going to do a whole lot of stuff online and look I will probably go to Canberra and do some kind of series of meetings and a focus for us.  Then, of course, the premier of my State, Daniel Andrews, locked us down.  So that made that impossible for me.  And then the Prime Minister cancelled those sittings.  So there is no prospect of any of us actually going to Parliament House on these days.  

But, of course, Parliament House is ‑ and that notion of the hill, Capital Hill ‑ is really just the physical manifestation of a set of structures and decision‑making modes and democratic engagements that do take place there but also take place all over Australia.  And so that's what we're going to be harnessing.  

When we look at the development of relationships with MPs, it's so important that we harness ‑ that we develop an ongoing set of conversations.  And, you know, we've talked in the past about how if we run an organisation or if you're an artist who really prioritises building relationships with collectors, you spend a lot of time focusing on those people, on partners and donors and sponsors, and so on.  But for some reason we don't treat individual politicians in that way.  We don't prioritise the building of those direct relationships.  Now, last week I asked who has had that opportunity, particularly since, you know, if lockdowns have ended in your State, who has had that opportunity to get in touch with an MP since this time to introduce yourself, to tag them on a social media post, really keen to know in the chat what kinds of homework people have been doing in the intervening weeks.  Because, again, it's just so important that politicians are hearing about the arts from people in their electorate or State, to hear about ‑ to hear about what is specifically going on.  They need, particularly Arts Ministers, need our active support and engagement so when they go and speak to front benchers that conversation is already good and fresh.  Caz Willis is saying how about every artist put a piece in their front windows or yards, that way every artist could participate.  If we do that, then our audience, if we put something in our window or our yard, then our audience is the people who happen to be passing by our front window or our yard.  So how can we go that next level and all of us do a small thing that can have a big impact.  Where would we put that work that idea.  Would we use social media?  Would we use the local media, and very glad again that Tex was saying how important it is to engage with local media, especially regionally, and in that suburban way.  Good idea, Caz, and how do we take it to that next level.  How do we all reach a large number of small audiences in ways that are going to achieve a critical mass on that day.  

So how do we change that?  Again, nurturing those local conversations that keep you in the regular habit of talking about your practice and connecting your practice to current issues, so that you're then ready to meet with an MP ‑ and next week our session is going to be about how do you do a meeting with an MP.  If you're already practised in having those conversations, it's, you know, so much easier, that advocacy flows so much more.  And it's something that ‑ ooh, I forget who was saying it at the end of our chat last week, saying that, "Oh, you know, is it a matter of building up that confidence to get on the phone with an MP or send them an email or tagging them into social media?"  So we're all going to build that confidence for each other.  

Another way of doing that is to form a local group of trusted confidants.  And connect one another with radio producers, advisers, politicians, business leaders and influential thinkers.  So who can you share your great networks with, and who should they be hearing from.  So, for example, among our group today, there will be some of you who have got good relationships with the editors of your local paper.  There will be others who have got a good relationship with someone who is, you know, really best mates with the local MP.  How can you swap and exchange and share those networks and make those introductions so that the editor is hearing from that other person ‑ sorry, so that influential person is hearing from that artist?  How do we develop and spread that?  

And, of course, yes, always inviting politicians to come and speak is hugely important.  We'll talk about the ‑ we talked about the Parliamentary Friendship Group in previous weeks.  This now goes to something that Mark Textor said earlier, and that was about having statistics ready to hand about your electorate or the electorate of the MP that you're about to meet with or engage in a social media discussion with.  I hope everyone knows about the Australia Council Electorate Profiles.  Has anyone used it before?  I know we've talked about it probably earlier on in the first weeks of our workshops.  Has anyone been using the Australia Council Electorate Profiles?  And if so, give us an example of what you've done with it.  And someone who can Google without being distracted, send us the link ‑ post the link to the Australia Council Electorate Profiles as well.  

So when this first came out a couple of years ago I described it as one of the most radical things that the Australia Council had ever done, and I'm enormously grateful for it.  So for government reporting reasons, the Australia Council have to report to government on the spread of electorates where their grants are distributed.  So that, you know, for all the kind of sports rorts type reasons that we're seeing now so that senior public servants can say with confidence that there is no skewing in terms of where those grants end up.  So it occurred to someone at the Australia Council that, mmm, wait a minute, we're collecting all this data.  We could actually make this available for everyone so that you can just go to the website and select an electorate from the drop‑down thing.  Then it gives you ‑ thanks, Penelope, for posting the link ‑ it gives you a world of information specifically for that electorate.  So what's the arts' participation rate?  What are some audience numbers?  What about box office, what about numbers of cinemas and things, what are some key institutions and so on?  So there's art participation, there's creative and cultural employment and businesses.  It does compare sports as well, a little table on ticket buying, ticket buying just for the arts, just for sport, and then together.  And so it's ‑ yeah, it is super dooper useful and the council are going to keep adding to this as they go.  Because, yeah, it's enormously useful.  And intriguingly, it's also something that has been enormously useful for a lot of MPs that I've met with.  Because I will say, "I looked up on electorate profiles before I came to see you and I found out blah, blah, blah."  And they say, "Ooh, what's that?"  And I will pull out my phone and show them.  And they rub their hands together in delight.  They say, "Oh, I'm about to meet with the member for whatever.  I'm now going to look this up and I will be able to say to her did you know in your electorate this is how people engage and connect with the arts."  So thank you, Australia Council.  I don't know if there's any of you on the line tonight.  But, yeah, this is enormously useful.  So enormously useful.  Anna is saying she has thrown the page to my CVA final year design students for they are a generation of practitioners who may well need to advocate like never before.  True.  In fact I'm giving a talk on these kinds of issues precisely.  But, yes, it is an incredibly useful tool.  

Now, Arts Day on the Hill is 12 August.  Thanks to Adam who has just posted the Australia Council patent make ‑ ‑ ‑ pattern makers audience outlook monitor which was just updated yesterday.  Some of you may have received surveys for this.  This is incredibly useful ‑ it's crucial, actually, right now ‑ but it's all about what's our readiness ‑ not just us but the broader general public ‑ what is our readiness and risk appetite to go back into galleries, into theatres, into spaces, small and large, so that it can be used for planning by artists and organisations, and also for government and also feed into the kind of protocols that organisations are using for keeping people safe.  Some really interesting insights there.  Thanks, Adam, for posting that.  

So Arts Day on the Hill is Wednesday, the 12th of August.  And I'm just going to see whether I can also share my screen and go to that page.  Let me see if that will be possible.  Because I know you can just click on a link but it's kind of not quite the same.  There is the screen sharing button.  It wants me to open an app.  I'm not going to do that.  So let's see if it will ‑ no.  It's not going to let me do that.  Let's see if I can quit out of that and make my image large again.  Okay.  I have totally pressed the wrong button.  But thank you to Penelope for posting the link.  So the aim of Arts Day on the Hill, like last year, is for us to achieve a critical mass of advocacy for the arts in all the ways that we do that.  It is just as much about galvanising us and each other as it is about dominating social media on every platform that we can muster, as well as securing some great media articles, that give us a day of making clear and constructive vision statements about the value of the arts.  We talked a lot in the past about how the arts create our future.  We've been talking about this a lot through COVID‑19.  We've talked a lot about a number of specific things NAVA has been advocating for, both during the pandemic but also more broadly, you know, as that set of things that we prioritise advocating for.  

There's also a lot of things that are important to you.  The idea for Arts Day on the Hill is for us to express a strong and visible diversity of views that are constructive, that are clear and that are compelling.  All the things we've talked about over the last couple of months about how good advocacy is unique because it's yours.  It can make a critical argument but it doesn't switch people off by being insulting or whingy.  It gives people a sense of the artists' vision, of your vision.  It gives people an idea of why investment in the arts is important.  And it does that in your own ‑ in your own terms.  

What we're asking for you to jump on with us this year is register through Arts Day on the Hill so we can connect you with a bunch of social media tips and tiles and all sorts of things.  Or if you're also interested in being a media spokesperson, then please tick that box and apply when you follow through to that link, and we will have ‑ I believe it is in a couple of Thursdays' time but whole let you all know that ‑ thanks, Penelope for posting the Survey Monkey link ‑ we will have an extra session on how to be a media spokesperson.  That will be led by Jane Morey from Morey media who we heard from a few weeks ago when we had the interesting conversation with Abdul Abdullah about what had happened with the political appropriation of his work.  Thank you to Penelope for posting the deadline is 31 July.  So we've got time to tally you all up and all work together on that.  

Of course, everyone can and should participate in Arts Day on the Hill by simply using the hashtag.  But if we want that extra intensive of applying everything we've been developing for the last couple of months, then please, please join us.  Caz has just said she's had to reconnect 20 times.  Praying for great communications.  Can you imagine how bad it was in the bushfires.  My goodness, it is just, you know, the digital divide in Australia I really worry is worsening.  I'm so glad and really grateful, Caz that you've persevered.  Because that's very, very good of you.  

So next week we've got Helen O'Neil joining us so that we can talk about how to plan a meeting with a politician.  The week after we're going to have our entire session just preparing for Arts Day on the Hill.  The week after that, the 12th of August, will be, you know, getting into that and planning Arts Day on the Hill.  It really isn't that far away, is it?  The next week is Helen.  The week after that we're preparing, the week after that is Arts Day on the Hill, 12 August.  Then the week after that we're going to do some debriefing as well.  As Penelope points out, the kit is available just for financial NAVA members only.  As I was saying earlier, these workshops with the generosity of the Daniel Besen Foundation, we've been providing the workshops free of charge to everyone.  But to be true to, and honour our first and foremost commitment to our members as a membership‑based organisation the kit is available only for NAVA members.  And as Penelope points out, membership starts at just $7.50 a month. 

Now, before we say bye, I notice there have been a few comments on the chat from earlier about our announcement on Monday that it is soon time for me to say goodbye to NAVA and the amazing people I've had the deep honour of working with for the last three years, and longer for many of us.  It is a time of big cultural change all over the world.  And it's an opportunity for leadership to continue in a refreshed way.  I'm enormously excited about NAVA's next steps.  I'm incredibly excited that that will be led under the leadership of Penelope Benton, as acting CEO for six months through this period.  Penelope is here with us.  Penelope if you want to jump on and say hi, bye, to everyone that would be super wonderful but understandable if you're totally in typing mode, which is totally ‑ ‑ ‑ good, she's here.  

PENELOPE:  Hello.  

ESTHER:   I think you've all met Penelope before. 

PENELOPE:  Hi, everybody.  Thanks. 

ESTHER:   So there are a lot of conversations that Penelope is going to be having with all of you in the time coming up over the next few months and has been having with us for a long time.  Penelope, what's our focus for those next few months when we look at strategic planning, but also the Code of Practice?  

PENELOPE:  Absolutely.  I hope the audio is all right because I've taken my ear things out.  But yes, absolutely, the focus of our next ‑ or the rest of this year is really on consultation for revising the Code of Practice, and we're going to get much deeper into that work as a priority, at the same time that we undertake some membership surveys and research with you and ‑ and, yeah, do some major strategic planning for NAVA's next chapter.  Very full five months ahead. 

ESTHER:   A very full five months ahead.  And a lot of really intensive member engagement.  There really has never been a better time to join NAVA to shape not just the next steps for this incredibly important organisation, not only to shape the Code of Practice and influence best practice for the sector and for the industry, but, of course, to keep amplifying your voice and developing your voice.  So on that note, we will say bye.  We've gone a whole minute over‑time according to my device here.  Everyone, we're going to see you next week.  Next week is Helen O'Neil.  She is the last of our guests.  We're going to look at how to plan a meeting with a politician and then go into a lot more detail around Arts Day on the Hill.  And after next week you will have just still a couple more days to register and join us.  Thanks so much everyone for this evening.  Thanks, Penelope. 

PENELOPE:  Thank you.  A pleasure to be here. 

ESTHER:   And we will see you all this time next week.  Bye, everyone.  

PENELOPE:  Bye. 

ESTHER:   Bye.  

(End)