It has been a long time between updates here, so this is an honest account of what has been happening since the election, what has not, and what comes next.

The short version is that the campaign did not wind up after the last election. It went quiet, which is a different thing, and most of what has happened since has been the sort of work that does not generate news: sorting out the structure, finding the people, and building a way to develop policy that is worth the name.

Here is where each of those has got to.

Getting the structure right

The company that carries the campaign was set up to contest one election. That was the right decision at the time, but it left an organisation built for a single event rather than for the long run, and a workload concentrated on very few people.

So the structure is being rebuilt. A renewed and expanded board is being put in place, with the board holding governance, compliance and continuity, and a separate management committee running the campaign day to day. The point of the split is that the board is meant to outlast any one campaign and carry the movement between elections, while the committee can change shape, or change hands entirely, as campaigns come and go.

One rule worth naming, because it goes to the heart of what we are trying to be: if any director decides to nominate as a candidate, they resign from the board first. Nobody should be able to say that the people funding and governing the campaign are the same people who benefit from it.

Building the platform

We are not going to arrive with a finished policy platform and ask you to agree with it. The whole argument for a community independent falls apart if the positions were written in a room somewhere and then focus-tested.

What we have instead is a framework and two tests. Every policy has to answer whether it is fair, meaning burdens and benefits are shared reasonably between industry and workers, between generations, and between those who earn wages and those who hold capital. And it has to answer whether it can be sustained over decades rather than one electoral cycle, which covers the budget, the environment, and whether population growth is matched by the housing, infrastructure and services to carry it.

The areas we are working through run from the kitchen table issues that decide most votes, through to a few where an independent can genuinely do something a party cannot. AI is the clearest example of the second kind. It is going to reach into almost every other policy area, the decisions about it are being made a long way from Sturt, and neither major party has much to say about who ends up with the productivity gains.

Consultation is what turns this framework into actual policy, and it opens shortly.

The candidate

We do not have one yet, and we are not going to pretend that is a minor detail.

What we do have is a clear view about how the choice gets made. It gets made here, through a documented process with a selection panel and published criteria, rather than by a handful of people settling on someone they know. That takes longer. It is also the only version that lets a candidate stand up in front of this electorate and say they were chosen by it.

What would help right now

Three things, in rough order of how much difference they make.

Sign the gas petition. Australia collects less tax overall than most developed countries and leans harder on wage earners than almost any of them, while a large share of our gas exports attract no royalties at all. We are gathering signatures across Sturt and passing the numbers to the national campaign, so this electorate is on the record.

Register for the consultation. It costs you nothing now and it means you hear about it the day it opens rather than three weeks later.

Consider chipping in. About five dollars a week, taken monthly, is what lets a campaign this far out from an election plan properly instead of scrambling. It also settles who we answer to, which matters more to us than the money does.

Two things coming up

The first is simply a get-together. Most of this has happened over email and in meeting rooms, and a movement is ultimately people who have met each other. Come along, ask the hard questions, and work out whether you want to be part of it.

The second is a community session on AI, run in two halves. First, a couple of subject matter experts talking in plain language about where the technology has actually got to, the opportunities and the risks both. Then the floor goes to the room: what it means for work here, what it costs in energy and water, who captures the benefit, and what protections people in Sturt actually want. Speakers, dates and venues are being finalised and we will post them here first.

Thanks for sticking around through the quiet part.