Haere rā from Laura
Kia ora e te ActionStation whānau,
One of the things I love most about ActionStation is that we are powered by people. Our community set the course for our work in many different ways:
Regular online surveys to shape consensus
Voting members with governance oversight of our Board and constitution
A majority member-funded financial model so that we are beholden to the community and not corporations, lotteries or government
In 2017, I loved helping to coordinate Kai and Kōrero, a nationwide distributed consultation process where ActionStation members came together in homes, cafés, community halls and even a McDonalds to discuss and imagine the future of Aotearoa New Zealand in 2040.
We chose 2040 because it will be 200 years since Te Tiriti o Waitangi was first signed and because we wanted to invite the kind of imaginative thinking that can happen when thinking long-term. More than 500 people participated in those conversations and more than 4,000 people participated in the corresponding online survey.
Our staff team then took those insights to a panel of independent policy experts and Indigenous leaders to ask: What are the policies you recommend in the 2017 - 2020 electoral cycle that will help achieve these outcomes by 2040?
We put it all together and created what’s called Te Ira Tāngata - or the human blueprint - a crowdsourced living vision for Aotearoa in 2040, the values we need to get us there and some policy ideas to make it happen. Our plan then was to organise ourselves and our community to work together in new and creative ways to bring that vision and those policies to life.
Today, I’m proud to share a people-powered progress report on how we as a progressive movement are tracking. With the help of some incredible volunteers, we’ve analysed the government’s progress on all 51 of our policy recommendations which you can read about in more detail here:
The victories and progress within this report do not belong to the ActionStation community alone. The wins have been achieved by many organisations and people working together over many, many years to make progressive change possible. I am grateful to every single person who takes action - big and small - for a fair and flourishing Aotearoa New Zealand and I hope reading this progress report brings you hope.
As you know, in 2020, I was also offered the role of Executive Director of Capacity Building at the Foundation for Young Australians and have decided to accept.
My role will be in supporting young leaders and youth movements to unleash their power to change Australia and the world. I wasn't actively looking for a new job and was approached by the new CEO to apply. After sitting with the decision, speaking with my tūpuna in silent meditation by the ocean and discussing it at length with my whānau - I have decided it's the right thing to do.
From my perspective, Australia needs more allies for Indigenous and climate justice. When I was thinking about applying for the role, I saw a news story about a mining corporation blowing up a 46,000-year-old sacred Indigenous site. More recently we've seen the destruction of Djab Wurrung birthing trees. These stories break my heart and my ambition over time is to better connect young leaders and youth movements across Aotearoa, Australia and the Pacific so that we all benefit.
It has been an honour and privilege to serve the ActionStation movement over the past (almost) seven years. I have loved being a part of, and nurturing, this broad-based community working for Indigenous sovereignty, a distributive economy, whānau wellbeing, a healthy planet and restorative justice. We have had some incredible wins, I've made some lifelong friends and learned so much along the way.
I'll be sad to leave the ActionStation team and the opportunity this new government presents for transformative change, but I know that I leave the work in capable and determined hands.
With love and hope,
Laura
P.S. I was recently interviewed in a podcast by The Spinoff called The Fold. You can listen to that kōrero here.