Sam Mostyn

speaker

313 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Aug 2026 last heard 1 Aug

Sam Mostyn’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 1.

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Full Story · Governor general Sam Mostyn on the ‘growing catastrophe’ in our democracy · 1 Aug 2026 podcast

I think we're making, I think from my office's point of view, I hope I'm making some progress.

I can't really be the judge of that, though, because I'm out there with an experiment in trusting the Australian people to come with this discussion about kindness and care and respect and opening up to each other and building trust.

And I'm hoping that is having an impact.

I get good feedback where we do that in the physical world.

I hope we can keep growing on that and I see it predominantly in young Australians who I think are recommitting to a sense of what it means to be involved in public life and want to see us all do that respectfully and with great civility.

very much so so when i'm welcomed into communities around the country and i visited i visited every state and territory twice and i'll keep doing that in the course of my term it's clear that the way i have my pathway into those communities is through the mayor the councillors the local representatives who know their communities best and that's why i have a very deep relationship my first speech after i was sworn in was a day later in canberra to the national conference of the local government association in 2024 and i've gone back each year i've just done my third one um

And that's mayors and local councillors?

That's mayors.

It's about 1,300 to 1,500 of our local representatives who come together in Canberra once a year.

They have a big platform and they do share with me the things that they are most concerned about collectively.

This year, just last month, they shared with me that lack of civility in their own communities as directed to them as elected representatives is

has become very, very challenging, making it very difficult to seek office if you know that you're putting yourself into very dangerous traffic with people who now don't feel the need to be respectful, who make direct threats.

We've seen this all around the world with elected representatives at all levels, this desire to be hateful, to attack.

to not enter into good, peaceful, robust, but respectful discussions on things where we might not agree.

And so that's happening certainly in local government.

I feel for those people who put their hands up to be local councillors and mayors because they have a unique relationship.

They understand their communities deeply.

they're the ones dealing with the recovery that's happening in so much of our country at the moment from weather disasters, from floods, from heat, from terrible drought.

Wherever I see a community that's in recovery, you also see a growth in those that feel they are being left behind and their anger grows because they're in a state of unease because things have not gone well because of a big event.

And so I think there's a collision of all these things going on.

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