David Pocock

You should be serving the public.

I think when it comes to, again, the incentives for decision-making, you have politicians who, yeah, there's political donations, there's vested interests who are both working the inside channel

have good relationships with the various ministers, but then also holding a very big stick and saying, hey, if you tax our gas exports, we're going to come after you.

We've got millions of dollars to run a campaign.

Exactly.

And then I think you've got politicians who kind of look at that and go, well...

We could probably just get away with doing something small here, selling it as a win, and then hopefully the media interest dies down a bit and we move on to the next issue.

But you've just got to look around.

How many different crises do you hear us talking about?

We've got a cost of living crisis, a housing crisis, environmental crisis.

You're in a crisis because you haven't actually dealt with the problems that are coming at you and you just put them off.

And I think it's that short-term decision-making that has just compounded to the point where a lot of Australians are... I guess there's not just a declining trust in politics and institutions, which I think in and of itself is a problem, but there's this real anger that I'm picking up from people.

So...

yeah we can change things i mean lobbying reform is is one thing i've been pushing hard i think there should be far more transparency around who has access to parliament house who ministers meet with that should really be the sort of the bare minimum so we can actually make our own minds up who did you consult on that policy who had access and then we look at the the legislation say well of course it's skewed towards you know property investors you didn't talk to anyone who's

who's struggling to get into the market or even groups that are representing people who are homeless.

So yeah, lots of challenges there, but on all those things, there are clear solutions and it's just getting to the point where the major parties are willing to embrace them.

And sure, it'll be uncomfortable, there'll definitely be some losers, but I think ultimately our democracy will be stronger.

Yeah, I mean, three-year election cycles don't make it easy, but we can definitely make better decisions.

I mean, one example, we currently don't have a national housing plan.

There's no plan.