David Pocock

And I think that's what really gives me hope is you're seeing people engage like they haven't in the past and actually say, well, hang on, this doesn't make sense.

And I'm going to go and look for an independent or a minor party.

And I think that's a really powerful message to the major parties.

I think Australia is a great country.

This place could be incredible if we actually backed Australians who are working on the big challenges we face and also just looked at challenges and sort of say, well, what is the opportunity in this?

How do we...

you know genuinely try and turn this around in our favor and you know i think a lot of that comes down to investing in things like research and development like we've hit a record low of rnd as a percentage of gdp that does not bode well for the future um so it's things like that backing aussie companies you know i don't know if we're going to talk about procurement at all it's it's kind of seems like this boring thing but over the past few years i've really enjoyed getting stuck in the weeds of procurement and just seeing

how much money the government spends you know 70 odd billion dollars plus every single year and if we actually spent that on aussie companies that are developing solutions on ai on on tech platforms and on all these things you actually then start to grow australian companies that can then you know go on and compete internationally so i don't know i think there's huge opportunity um in terms of diversifying our economy and really building an economy that serves

people.

But we've got some huge challenges.

You look at what's happening in AI, what that's going to mean for jobs market, for unemployment, all these sorts of things.

And I think that does take some political courage and leadership to actually look at the problem and start putting things in place now, rather than a few years time us going, oh dear, we really

We really stuffed that one up and where to from here.

I don't know if it's money.

I think money is a part of it, but it's too simplistic.

It's not all of it.

The thing that I've seen is as an independent, I very much view my job as just working for people I represent here in the ACT.

My job is to listen to them, to find solutions, and then just to bang on about them and try and get some change.

Yeah, they should.

And you're a public servant.