Fresh sounds to the election echo chamber from Camp GetUp

Public interest political lobby group GetUp turns 5 next month. In that short time, they have helped sack John Howard, accrued nearly 400 000 members across Australia, and helped install a federal Labor government whose policies they can now genuinely oppose.

With the election certain to be called soon, the group has two immediate issues to tackle. Firstly, there are still 1.4 million eligible Australians unregistered to vote. Once the election is announced, these people will miss out. Secondly, to influence politicians, GetUp know that they must first influence public opinion. While the organisation helped contribute to the recent government backdown over internet censorship, Senator Stephen Conroy’s web filter will probably be the last simple issue to be targeted until after the election.

Writing that “we’re back to politics as usual: sound bites, spin doctors and media pundits ignoring real people and their stories,” GetUp are looking to an element of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign – specifically, Camp Obama. Reborn as Camp GetUp and due to be held at the UTS building over the weekend of July 24 and 25, the NGO hopes to align skills workshops and campaign strategy with the personal stories and insights of participants and volunteers.

In New South Wales GetUp will deploy the lessons learnt over the weekend in key marginal seat campaigns to be run in Wentworth and Bennelong – Malcolm Turnbull and Maxine McKew’s seats respectively. Part of the plan to bring fresh sounds to the election echo chamber stems from a simple belief that genuine public interest campaigning will once again “provide the passion, humanity and energy so absent in the practiced smiles and hollow lines of our politicians”.

Camp GetUp runs over Saturday July 24 and Sunday July 25, from 9am to 6pm. For more, visit www.getup.org.au.