One of these days I'm just gonna lie in the sun/But right now I'm wond'rin', is that day ever coming?

I’ve been thinking a bit lately about advocacy and rights. In particular, I’ve been trying to figure out what the difference is between advocacy and having a whinge. Because there are certainly any number of issues where one could be rightly considered an advocate, either for ones’ own rights, the rights of a group or the rights of society. What isn’t so clear however, is how far one must remove ones’ own personal interest in order for something to be purely advocacy with no whingeing.

To be clear, I’m not talking about people whose job it is to be advocates for a particular part of the community. Lots of these people do their job very well – I don’t think we’d have the society we enjoy without organisations like ACOSS, VCOSS, YDAS and the like. There is a real benefit, I think, in ensuring that people without the traditional recourses to problem solving, be it at a very personal scale or in securing government services, have a voice in our society.

And while we’re at it, let’s excuse unions from this mix also. While there is a modicum of personal interest in union activity, there’s a lot of representation in unions’ work (particularly in those industries where pay scales are consistent regardless of union membership) that isn’t specifically about boosting membership – because workers all enjoy the gains made. In larger issues such as Work/Family Balance and the like, it’s most people who will benefit from a change in law, award or conditions that are won by unions on behalf of all workers, despite their relatively low participation rates in some industries.

But what about having a gripe with your local council? This evening I saw a bloke on television wearing a shirt that said “Whistle blower” in big red letters. He was aggrieved because the council had changed planning laws and now his view had been built out. In retaliation, he had painted his house with a range of grafitti slogans. While I think this is amusing on some levels and would certainly appear to be his democratic right, I guess I’m not convinced that he is a freedom fighter of the classic mold.

And what happens when you have a “win” early on? Do you have to keep fighting in order to ensure total victory, or is it enough to say “well, I got them to let me build a huge fence, now bugger the black-wing zoo-paddler, I’m off to Tahiti?”

And what about a community issue from which you stand to gain? There seems to be a lot of currency in expert opinions, they’re the “go to” for the media because they’re readily accessible. But is it reasonable for those people to claim personal responsibility should something be achieved? A couple of years ago there were a series of anti-war protests that some high-profile celebrities were involved in. They were meaningful protests, with genuine grievances about a social issue. The protest didn’t get very far, which probably says less about the celebrities and more about the target of the protest. But had that protest been successful, what would the celebrities’ personal stake have been? Would they have demanded due deference for the donation of their time? Was their time more valuable than Betty Bloggs or Joe Jones or any one of the thousands of other people who have donated their time to halting what they believe to be an unjust war?

There’s been a bit of blue in our place recently about a particular community issue. One group of people wants to do something, another group of people doesn’t want them to. Now, there is plenty of argument to be had in the issues at hand. Lots of expert reports, lots of people weighing in, letters to the paper daily and regional meetings, etc. So I have to wonder why the people on one side of the argument decided to make it an argument about “democracy”. Instead of just saying “Hey, look, we’ve got all this evidence that what you’re going to do is utterly heinous, man”, they’ve alleged that the other group is damaging irrevocably the democracy of our system. Yuh-huh. And I’m ruining democracy in my household by enforcing a 7:30pm bedtime.

For me, the “you’re killing democracy” thing is starting to get a bit like “un-Australian”, it’s over-used and quite often, simply inaccurate. I’m all for the protest of illegitimate attacks on democracy, but can we save it for the times when there is really something at stake? Like when a Federal government seeks to impinge on individual suffrage for example? Or when political donation limits go sky-high so that major donors can do so under the cover of anonymity?

Eh – maybe I’m just casting around for something to be angry about, but this is really driving me nuts at the moment. So there’s my whinge, and I won’t be calling it advocacy or anything remotely similar.

And now that you’ve waded through that self-indulgent pap, go and read Sean Gorman’s op. ed about the Federal Government's planned apology and Nelson's response. It’s quite ace.