Everything Feels Increasingly Political. Navigating Conversations With People Who Have Different Politics - Uncut with Zara Seidler
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This episode was recorded on Camaragal land. Hi guys and welcome back to another episode of Life Uncut. I'm Laura. I'm Brittany. Now, as you all, I'm sure, are very aware, there is an important federal election coming up on May the 3rd. And you might have also noticed that when it comes to politics, it can be particularly tricky to navigate these conversations with the people that you love in your life.

Especially when they sit on opposite sides of the fence. Today we are joined by Zahra Seidler, who is the co-founder of The Daily Oz. But Zahra has experience in the political world and also has a degree in political science, international and global studies, majoring in government, if we want to get very specific with things. Very specific. I love it. Very specific. I love it.

Okay, we wanted to dive into how pop culture has become increasingly political, especially, I mean, we saw it first in the US and that has really migrated into how we are navigating this election currently, why the divide between the left and the right feels very extreme at the moment, and perhaps most importantly, how do we have these conversations with people that we love who have alternate views to us? Zara, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having

me, girls. It's been a long time coming. I know. I'm really stoked to be here. Just a small topic to talk about on my first podcast. Yeah. Like just unpack it all. We're just really easing you into it. But where does your, I mean, we were just speaking off mic before this started, just about how and where you started. You studied overseas in the US. You studied in Georgetown. Where did your obsession come for politics? Was it always something like through high school? Because it's such a

I mean, I feel like it's so niche what you have studied. So talk to us about how you ended up in this industry. I have always been interested in the news. I was just like kind of that really nosy. I think it's actually just nosiness. I want to know everything all the time. And so my family always tells me that when I was younger, I would come downstairs in my family home and just announce news to them. I wanted to be the one that told them what had happened. I distinctly remember when Michael Jackson died.

I came down and I was like, guys, you won't believe it. He's dead. And everyone was like, good morning, Zara. It's a pleasure to see you this morning. It's so funny you say that. I was the same child. My favorite thing to do every morning as a teenager was read the news and come and tell my family at breakfast. But I think that's why you're a communicator now.

I do think that there is a really clear tie between people who like to consume media and those who go into it. And so, yeah, I studied at Georgetown on exchange. It was when Donald Trump was first inaugurated into the presidency. And it was probably the first time that I saw politics really all around me. You know, you got into a cab and cab driver was talking about it. You went to a cafe and the barista was talking about it. And then I came home and that wasn't the case. No one was talking about politics.

and I just really, really cared. I really wanted my friends to care. I wanted to talk about it with them. So Sam, my best friend and now co-founder and I, we started The Daily Oz, honestly, just as a side hustle to be able to talk to our friends about the news. It was selfish. I was like, I want them to care as much as I do. We'll start this thing. And a couple of years later, here we are.

But also I think it wasn't just around like get your friends to care. It was also the accessibility of it. 100%. Bringing the news to social media in a way that was impartial was something that was ahead of its time because there was news on social media and people were consuming it that way but so much of it was just so deeply trenched in biases by people who didn't necessarily have the skill set to be giving the news out. Yeah, I mean so much of it goes to the fact that my friends at that time did care. They just didn't know where to get information.

Yeah. And the legacy media, it wasn't speaking their language. It wasn't speaking directly to them. It wasn't using language they understood. It wasn't explaining things. Why do you think that is though? Why do you think –

the disparity is so large between the way that it's spoken about and the obsession and interest in the US than it is here in Australia. Because even when I think growing up, it wasn't something my family spoke a lot about. It wasn't something you read on the news. It wasn't something anyone was talking about. It was just like, oh, this is who's in charge now. No one, the number of people that would go

and vote that had no idea who they were voting for, what they were voting for. If you asked them when they walked out, they'd say, oh, I just picked a number. Why do you reckon we just never had that obsession? I think we have mandatory voting here and the U.S. doesn't. And I think that makes a really big difference. In the U.S., you have to convince people to care enough to go and vote. Mm-hmm.

Here, you just have to convince people to pay attention as like a starting point. And so I think that there is a smaller leap that has to be done. And so it isn't spoken about as much. And also because we have mandatory voting, our parties tend to be more around the centre

because it's not on that fringe as much. I think it really depends on the household you grew up in because I feel like my household was pretty conversational around politics. But growing up, I really understood the divide between Labor and Liberal. And that's because my grandfather, my papa, he worked in the coal mines, he worked in the steel mines.

So we were a Labor voting family. And I think going back 50, 40 years ago, there was such a division between what the party stood for. And now it seems as though things are far more moved towards the middle. And I guess like another big question around it, do you think that young people are showing more of an interest or do you think it's just more accessible now with social media? Yeah, I think I'll take your second question first. I do think that we are just here.

hearing about it more and it's more accessible now. I don't think that young people caring about politics is new. You know, if you look back decades, you see young people out in the streets protesting wars and protesting governments. That's not new. It's interesting because I was talking to my mother-in-law about this and talking about how there's just this fierce interest on social media. And she was like, Laura,

I was protesting for women's rights when I was at university in the 70s. She's like, it makes me annoyed that you think it's different now. And I was like, I really don't. But I think we forget what our past generations did as university students, you know? It's not new. Young people have always been highly, highly political. I think it's just amplified now because of social media and we can see it and people can post something in that

looks like they are taking a political stand on something. Whereas before you had to physically go out, go and protest, go call your local representative, whatever it was. It's a lot more accessible now to, I guess, engage with politics than it ever has been before. And to your first question about whether we're seeing the parties kind of go closer to the middle, what we are seeing is

is that there is an increase in the number of voters turning to minor parties and to independents. So those people that are kind of sitting outside of the major parties. And so while there is certainly this move towards the major parties getting closer and closer together, we see Peter Dutton and Anthony Albanese kind of commit to whatever the other is doing. We do see, for example, the rise of the Greens or the rise of independents. And so there is this very full spectrum

the votes are kind of just going in different ways than they traditionally would have. But I do think that it's all cyclical. Nothing in politics is new. It happens as a cycle and we kind of swing one way and then swing the other way. We were also talking earlier before about with the Daily Oz, you get a lot of responses regarding politics, a lot of people asking questions, a lot of people spitting their opinions at you guys. And we were sort of having a conversation about whether we think

our generation fully understands the situation or if they are pretending to understand because they don't want to admit they don't understand and that they are just spitting back information that they have heard from other sources, just regurgitating. And I think it's really interesting because I don't think it's anything to be embarrassed about if there are people listening right now that don't completely understand what they're voting for and why, that don't understand how the political system works. That's nothing to be embarrassed about, but that's why we do want to do these podcasts. If you didn't grow up in a family like that

or you don't have a huge interest in it and you're not studying it, it's okay to not understand. You've got to start somewhere. Absolutely. You have to start somewhere. So let's just start with the basics. The election is coming up on May 3. What does that mean for the next three years? What are people actually voting for and what are the fundamentals we should be understanding before we go to vote? I love this question because, I mean, I wrote a book recently

called No Silly Questions. It's right behind you actually, you know. It's just behind me for that very reason because we don't want people to feel embarrassed about asking questions. A lot of the time no one's ever been taught this stuff at school. We know that civics literacy isn't taught at the standard that it should be and as you said, if you don't grow up with it at home, where are you meant to learn this? And so I do think it's really important to just strip it back to the basics, just fully understand what it is that you are engaging with. So let's start at the beginning. So May 3, we have a federal election.

That means that we are electing who will form the federal government. So we have local, state and federal. This is the big dog. So all of Australia, not New South Wales, not Victoria, etc.,

When you go into the ballot, you will see that there are two sheets of paper there for you. So we have a lower house and an upper house in our federal parliament. Lower house, House of Reps, upper house, Senate. So we'll just deal with the lower house first because that's kind of the one that will really impact who forms government. So unless you live in two electorates in the country, you are not going to see the names of Anthony Albanese or Peter Dutton on the

that ballot sheet because you are electing who you want to send to the lower house. And that person is not going to be Anthony Albanese or Peter Dutton, unless you live in Grayndler or you live in Dixon, which are their electorates. So for example, if you live in the electorate of Wentworth, for example, you will see a sheet there that has the Liberal candidate, the Labor candidate, the Independent candidate, the Greens candidate. I won't keep going with all of these things. You get the idea.

And you have to number one and through however many candidates there are, you have to fill out every single box in Australia. That's how it works.

And then that gets counted. And whoever reaches the certain magic number in the House of Representatives, we have 150 seats and you have to reach a certain threshold as a party to form government. Right now, Labor has formed government because they have the majority of seats in the lower house. That makes Anthony Albanese our current prime minister. That

could all change when we head to the election. And if the coalition, which is the Liberal Party and the Nationals Party, if they win enough seats to get to that magic number, then they become the governing party of Australia and Peter Dutton would instead become our prime minister. If we go to the Senate, that's the upper house. You don't form government in the upper house, but it does make it easier to pass legislation if you have a majority in the upper house and a majority in the lower house.

It's really fascinating because I feel like a lot of people go in there with the understanding of being like, okay, I want it to be Albanese or I want it to be Dutton, but don't really understand what makes it happen. How to get there. A hundred percent. And preferences matter a lot with something like that. We have a system called preferential voting. So who you put as your number two matters a lot as well as your number one and everything else.

So what about in terms of voting for someone who is an independent or a smaller party voting for the Greens or voting for Allegra Spender, for example, if you're in my area, what does that then contribute to? Yeah. So we have in the lower house and in the upper house something that's called the crossbench. So we have a two-party system, which means that the major parties, Labor and the Coalition, because they sit together with the nationals,

They both physically, if you can imagine this, sit on both sides of the chamber. And then in the middle, our parliament's very literal, we have something called a crossbench. And that is made up of the independents and minor parties who don't fit into either of those major parties. So, for example, Allegra Spender, she is currently a sitting MP. She represents Wentworth. And she sits independently.

in the middle of Labor and the coalition. And that means she doesn't have to vote with Labor. She doesn't have to vote with the coalition. She can decide based on every piece of legislation that comes to her what she wants to do based on the electorate that she represents. And as I said earlier, we have seen a rise in especially young people voting for

independence and minor parties. The Greens are the biggest minor party, but there's lots of smaller ones. You know, Pauline Hanson's One Nation, for example, is a minor party that has been in parliament for a very long time. She's been there since the 90s. And so, you know, we've got to understand who makes up our parliament today.

But it's also no wonder, like if anyone just listened to that breakdown and you haven't ever been interested in politics, you've never spoken about it or thought about it. I understand why it's confusing. It's so confusing. It is a very confusing system. It's not just like one and off you go. No. And I think there's a lot of people that don't also understand the importance of the preferential voting, like how important it is to label number two and three. Don't just be like, I've done my number one, I'll fill the boxes so I don't get fined and I can...

get out of here. Yeah. In a previous life, my job around election time was what was called a scrutineer. And a scrutineer literally watches the counting of the votes and you have to watch to make sure they're going in the right piles. Is that what you were doing? Yeah. This is how bloody minute the process is that we don't have computers doing this. We have humans doing this. And you physically, like if the lowest preference is out, you have to move them to the next pile.

And then to the next pile. And you have to watch that nobody is like putting it in the wrong pile or trying to influence a vote. And so I have seen through that process how important it is that you vote correctly, because if you don't label every box gets thrown out and it's a donkey vote and it doesn't count.

What do you think are the biggest ticket items that are shaping this election coming up? Yeah, such a good question. I've done with the Daily Oz a lot of research into this because in other elections it's been very clear there was one issue that young people cared about far and away the most and that was climate change. It's not the case this election. Cost of living is bad.

by far the biggest issue that young people care about when it comes to who they are voting for at this election. And we did this whole bunch of polling and research and it was like cost of living and then there was kind of all of these adjacent issues. So things like housing, the cost of groceries and then like the sixth issue was climate change because young people can't afford right now to care about

all the things that they know are urgent because they can't even take care of themselves at the moment. You can't put a roof over your head. How are you going to change the rest of the world? Exactly. And it's a really challenging environment. We know that a cost of living crisis isn't unique to Australia. There's been high inflation all over the world, but we are really feeling it here. And so young people, as well as all generations, this isn't unique to young people. We are really, we know, going to vote on the hip pocket on cost of living.

Is that a real radical change from the last election? And when you say that the number one was climate change, we were just in such a different economic state at that time. Yeah, we really were. And, you know, we called it the climate change election. All of these teals who are a bunch of independents who won seats off the Liberal Party were understood to have won because of their strong stance on climate change. And that's just not the case right now.

Maybe it will return to that in the future. We know young people care about it. It's still urgent to them. They still think it's a really huge issue. They just can't afford to care in the way that they previously did. Yeah. I mean, in terms of, this is a very niche question, but in terms of the political parties and the conversations that have been had so far,

I know that there has been a lot of chatter around like the big supermarket chains price gouging and the insane profits that are being made across like, you know, fast moving consumer goods. Is there big promises that are being made in this sort of realm? Yeah. I mean, there are across kind of the board. We know that at the last budget, which was a couple of weeks ago, that the government promised tax cuts for everyone. Every single taxpayer was going to get a tax cut. That was supposed to help consumers.

with the cost of living. The Liberal Party has their own housing policy. There are a bunch of different things. All of them intended to get more money into the pockets of taxpayers across the country, but they kind of differ a bit in how they intend to get there. I don't know if this is too much of a personal opinion. I know that you are unbiased, but...

But who do you think or what party is really pushing or promising the most in terms of putting money back into the pockets of our citizens? Yeah, I mean, I understand the question. I don't think I can answer that. There's not a clue. It's a matter of perspective, really. Like if you believe the government shouldn't play a big role in your life and that they should let the economy run as it is, then you would –

veer towards one side of politics. If you think the government needs to intervene a lot, they need to do a lot of welfare, they need to do all of these things, you would naturally turn the other way. So I think it's really a matter of perspective. People just need to go out and really, and I know that we'll talk about this, but really go out and understand what all sides of politics are offering because you don't need to be stridently one way. You can figure out what you resonate deeply with and then kind of vote accordingly.

Well, this is the interesting question, though, because what we've seen that's so different this year, and, you know, we touched on it at the beginning, but what we saw happen in the States is that there is this really interesting cross-section that's happening between pop culture and politics in a way that I don't think it has been as accessible before. 100%.

What are your thoughts on people accessing their information around politics purely from, say, TikTok or influencers or podcasts? As someone that...

works in the news every day. What is your advice slash perspective on that? Yeah, I think the key word that you just said there is purely because I think there is absolutely a space for influencers to be talking about politics, for podcasters to be talking about politics. I think the more people that are talking about it, the better. I think the problem that arises is if a person, whether they are young or old, is

is only getting information from one source. That is never good for, you know, getting all the information that you need. And so I think it's really, really important that if you are seeking out information on this election from your favourite podcaster or your favourite influencer or your favourite creator,

You need to couple that with getting some of the kind of unbiased foundational knowledge that you can get from certain news sources. It's also having complete understanding that what you're listening to is opinion and not fact. Because sometimes I think the two can really be confused. They can. And I mean, like when you look at a traditional newspaper, like I know a lot of people aren't

necessarily going out to buy a newspaper, but there are however many pages, say 20 pages of the news. And then there are the opinion pages and it says opinion at the top. And then it has a whole bunch of op-eds and I mean, separate conversation about whether or not that's a good thing, but they are

clearly labeled as op-eds. And right now we don't have the same kind of regulations or the same standards for content creators because it is such a new space. You're right. The US election was this real turning point where we saw creators escalate

entering the political space meaningfully and engaging directly. And so I think there will be some time still while we try to catch up with how do we label things as opinions so that anyone that's listening can be like, that is this person's opinion. I respect their opinion, but I also know the foundation of facts that

sit behind that opinion. And I think that's why TDA, for example, I believe, I'll toot my own horn, that it's so important what we do because we give you the foundation of facts so that you can listen to your favorite podcaster and be like, oh, I understand what they're saying here. But you need all of that together. You always need a diverse media diet. Otherwise, you are going to end up kind of deep into this echo chamber.

I think it's so interesting because like I deeply see the benefits on both sides. Like I think like a lot of people who obviously have very passionate views are educated in the space. Of course, it comes with biases, but I think it is making it more accessible to people. But you hit the nail on the head. If that's the only people or the only way that you're receiving your information, you turn into an echo chamber of yourself. Like you're not even able to kind of understand what is fact or is biased opinion because there's nothing to compare it to.

And I think like, let's take this chat, for example, your listeners weren't expecting when you started this, that you would have this like deep political fact driven thing. We are here bringing a new perspective to your listeners that they can then go out and listen to a bunch of things and that they have some knowledge that they can interact and they might not have gotten that information from anywhere else. So you're right. It's really important that we do have this nexus point. It's

great. We just need more of it taken together. But I do think it also needs to be mentioned and highlighted that legacy media, so the newspapers, they also have problems with bias. This isn't a new media problem. The reason that TDA exists is because there are problems in traditional news as well that people don't trust. We know that there's the lowest levels of trust in

in media for young people, like in history. And so this is kind of all of media problem that we need to confront altogether.

Yeah, it's interesting when you say that because, I mean, you can think of any news outlet and know that it either has like a right-leaning political bias or a left-leaning political bias. Like, you know, publications that we're meant to be going to for the news, it's tricky to say, oh, well, I won't get it from pop culture because that's clearly got a bias when literally it feels like across the board it's existing. I mean, my favourite thing to look at in our comment section is, and this happened last week, we'll upload something and then someone in the comments will be like,

this is being paid for by the Liberal Party. And then someone else will be like, no, this is being paid for by the Labour Party. They're left-wing stooges. And I'm like, well, we're clearly doing a good job if you're both fighting about how left-wing or right-wing we are. We're not being paid. We can tell you we're not being paid by anyone. We're just doing our jobs here. You know, I think also the thing that can be tricky, especially now with Instagram, and it's something that we've talked about before, and TikTok as well, is that engagement is based on outrage culture.

So like the angrier that you can be about something, the longer it's going to keep someone on the platform for. And, you know, outrage culture is such a hugely beneficial tool for growing your own social media. And there's a personal gain that is also connected to a monetary gain. But it's, you know, it's a sidestep, but it definitely builds the beast. But I mean, if you just take my business, for example, we don't do opinion ever. We only do facts.

And if we did opinion, our business would probably be triple the size that it is today because you're right. Like the algorithm feeds on outrage. People stay longer. People comment more. You would probably bring more eyeballs, which means we could sell more ads. But there has to be some value always in just

the facts and it's really hard when you know that your business could flourish, you know, 10 times more if you did one thing. How do you think we navigate? I feel like the world the last two to three years has been in the most divisive time it has ever been with US politics, Australian politics, multiple wars. How do you think

How do you think we navigate these conversations with our families and friends when you do have differing political opinions? I think this is a really important question because ultimately it does come down to values because often our values inform how we see the world and what we think is right or wrong. But in saying that, I do think that it is so important to be

to be empathetic and to really understand where the person sitting across from you is coming from. No one, you know, creates these ideas in a vacuum. It's often informed by life decisions and life circumstances. Generational traumas. A hundred percent. There are all of these things that happen in someone's life to lead them to see the world in a certain way.

And so, you know, one of the things that we say is so important for TDA is to talk across and not down to our audience. And I do think the same is true when it comes to this. Speaking across from your friend and not down to them, not saying I'm better than you or you're wrong, I'm right. I can't believe you think that. How can you not see like all of these terms? Exactly, like finding a middle ground. There is always going to be more middle ground than you expect.

And it's really on the fringes that these views really start to diverge from one another. So I think just establishing what are the facts that we agree on and sitting down and just having a really, I know that it can be, I know this is so much easier said than done, but

having an agreed set of facts of we both agree that we want this for the world or we want this for our families and then understanding that they might want to get there a bit differently and just accepting that you can have different beliefs

And that that's actually okay too. But I think the moment we shut people out, we know that that pushes them further to the fringe. They'll become more extreme if they don't have people to be talking to. And I think sharing your opinion and sharing your life experience and why you've come to this, like Laura talking about why her family had voted a certain way traditionally, like that's really important. You know, we had a really interesting conversation a while back and I remember the backlash I got from it because I was like I –

would love to be able to retaliate, but sometimes you just have to bite your tongue. I was talking about... So I'll do it now. No, because it's been months. It's been years. Because it's very relatable. We were talking about, it was an ask on cut question. And it was in relation to the person talking about their grandparents having views that were just not congruent with what was happening, one, in the world today, and two, just like very outdated and problematic views.

And I was relating it to my grandparents. They've both passed away now. And I was like, look, my grandfather was an Italian immigrant who was bullied for being a quote unquote wog who denounced being Italian because he was so ashamed because he just wanted to fit in in Australia. So he also had a very skewed view on what it meant to be an immigrant here. And he thought it meant denouncing your heritage and being an Aussie. And so there were things that he thought that were problematic and didn't align with my views.

He was an incredibly loving grandfather who was like a dad to me and I wasn't going to stop loving him because of those views. I understood where they came from and I did my best to tell him when he was wrong. Yeah. But the feedback to that, it was almost as though there was this expectation that I would cut my granddad out of my life. I'm like, guys, he's 94. He's never going to change his fucking mind. Yeah. You're like, he's about to die. Literally. What benefit to my life is it going to be to –

Not love him because I don't agree with him. I can agree with him and I can still love him. Agree to disagree. And I know that that doesn't sit with a lot of people. And also it's a privileged ability to have. You know, it could be very different if you're, I mean, for example, if you're gay and your parents don't believe in your rights or gay marriage, like that's a very different hurdle to overcome. Of course.

But we all have to choose the things that's the most important thing to us and where that person sits in relation to us. Yeah, I do think you're right. I think distinguishing harmful situations and situations where a person's perspective is harmful to your sense of self, to your sense of identity, I think that you're entirely right. That's a different kettle of fish. But, you know, my grandparents are exactly the same. My grandparents are 95. They're Holocaust survivors who came out here with

Absolutely nothing. No money. They had watched all of their family be killed in front of their eyes. They came here with, you know, no sense of identity. Their Jewish identity had been the reason that they had been persecuted. And so their view of the world and of Australia is so different to mine. And the privilege that I grew up with, with safety, with family, with money, all of these things that they never had. And so when I sit across the dinner table to my grandmother and she says things that

that are wildly incongruent with my set of beliefs about the world, I have to understand what's informed those views. What? What?

One thing we do know about the algorithm, the way social media works, and we kind of touched on a little bit, but the idea of being in an echo chamber of your own belief systems. And this is something that came into effect quite a few years ago, but it was like, you're going to get fed more of what it is that you're engaging with. So if you're engaging with left-leaning politics, you'll be fed left-leaning politics. If you're engaging with right-leaning, you'll be fed right-leaning. And that in itself can make people think

think a certain way and also think that an outcome is going to be a certain thing. I think that we saw this quite a bit with the US election and people thinking Kamala had more of a chance than what she did. I think we also saw it with the yes vote in Australia. People were absolutely shocked by the landslide of it being a no vote because we were seeing so much of it in our own worlds on social media. How do you think we can break the cycle of that and be more literate in terms of what is actually

happening versus what we perceive to be happening. Yeah, this is so important because we were talking off mic before and I think anyone that was watching the polls or having conversations wasn't shocked by certain outcomes because the second you stepped outside that echo chamber and we always talk about like the loud minorities.

And those minorities are very loud, but there is a very kind of silent middle that is just out there not talking about their views, not doing that. I think the really, really important thing, and I know I've said this before, is to diversify where you're getting your information from. And that means not only getting it from social media. I know that's really rich because I run a social first news service. But it's important.

But I mean, like we've got a podcast, we've got newsletters, we've seen newsletters be the biggest thing for us in terms of growth for our business. And there are different ways that you can find information outside of social media. So if you think about the last 10 pieces of political content and what they were, if you think back and you're like, actually, I didn't hear a contrary opinion in 10 of those pieces of content. They were all telling me that

the coalition's amazing or they were all telling me that Labor's amazing. I think that's a really good sign for you to go out and actively seek out information from elsewhere. Like when I wake up every morning, I read the news from across the political spectrum and I know that that's unique because I work in news, but I will look at about 10 sources,

veering from the like kind of far left outlets of the world to the far right outlets of the world, because it's really important to know what everyone is saying and how they're positioning information. It also means that when you're having those conversations with people that you might not agree with, you know,

what they're reading too and how they formed those views because what you read really informs how you see things as well. And so I think really being active, especially around an election time and being really poignant and saying, I'm going to seek out information from this or that or this or that. And it just means you have a bit more of a holistic diet that isn't just passive. It's not just coming to you, as you said, based on the clicks that you've had.

So having said that, what do you think are some of the main resources or tools people can use to go and compare political parties or policies? There's a lot out there and we're seeing so much innovation in this space. I mean, when it comes to specific election information, there are a bunch of tools. I've seen a really cool tool recently built by two young women that are doing amazing things. It's called Build a Ballot.

And basically you give this, I'm not going to pretend I understand the technology, but you give this piece of technology, you answer a bunch of questions. It asks you like, what do you think about this, that, this, that. And then at the end, based on the views that you have described to this thing, it will literally build a ballot for you. So it will tell you based on what you answered about what you think is important, what

here is what you should number on the ballot box one through seven. And so I think, you know, if you are not one of the more politically engaged people and you're finding that you go to, you know, the local school on election day on May 3rd and you're like, I don't know what I'm meant to number, a tool like that can be really helpful because it's matching your political beliefs to, for example, the numbers. As long as it's not run by one of the parties secretly. Exactly. It's not.

But the thing I think that's interesting about this is like a lot of people might know the 1, 2, 3 or they might know the 1, 2, 3, 4 or the 1, 2. Yeah. But they don't know the rest and the rest becomes a mishmash of uncertainty. Yeah, it's like the sex party. Yeah, sometimes you just go for the name. Yeah. It's like when you want to go buy a bottle of wine, someone's going to know what wine you want, you pick the label on the bottle. Fun fact though. Yeah. And they literally never resonate with something more. But a fun fact is that before the election there is a lottery.

And all the candidates in a seat have their names put into a like, like think of it as like that lottery ball and their names are put in and it's spun around. And then it comes out with the order of whose name is going to be where on the ballot, because we know that that's important because so many people just put one next to the first name because they don't know.

anything else, which I understand. And so where the person's name is on the ballot is really important. And I just think a tool like Build a Ballot, for example, or something like Vote Compass, the ABC has for the longest time had something called Vote Compass, where you answer heaps of questions about things that you might not think are like overtly political. And then it tells you based on what you answered, we think that you would be best suited to voting for

And that is run by the public broadcaster. They have a charter where they have to be independent. They're not allowed to be biased. And I think tools like this are really great for just a starting point. You don't have to take it as gospel, but just a starting point. Zara, thank you so much for coming and being a part of the podcast. Thanks for having me.

I think so many people are genuinely interested but don't know where to get started and want to make sure that the voice that they have counts to something that feels important to them. But it is so, so critical where you get your information from, how you digest that information, and the Daily Oz is a great place to start. I mean, I think I want my parting note to be there are no silly questions. If you feel like you want to know the answer to something, there is so much information available. Always ask the question. The chances are that...

someone else sitting next to you has exactly the same questions. So, you know, having podcasts like this, you girls are killing it. And thank you so much for having me. Thanks, love.