Page 1165 - Week 04 - Friday, 23 April 2021
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of government policy development. However, I have grown concerned since being elected at how many of my constituents in Brindabella are not engaged with the YourSay program and have been surprised when I have introduced it to them. Can you walk me through the government’s marketing strategy to ensure maximum participation, particularly among diverse groups, including young people?
MR BARR: I thank Mr Davis for the question. There are obviously a number of different elements to the YourSay process. We have an online community panel that now has, I am told, more than 4,700 Canberrans who have registered. We are looking to continue to grow the size of that online panel. Its demographic and geographic representativeness is very good. Where we have needed to supplement that, particularly with young people, there has been an active process to recruit more young people onto the panel. That has occurred at university campuses, the CIT and indeed in other youth engagement opportunities.
There is a social media element to recruitment for the YourSay community panel. More broadly, YourSay is a platform that enables people to participate in particular community consultations in their own time. It has quite a sophisticated web-based tool that enables a very diverse range of community consultation activities to occur—everything from commenting on specific development proposals through to policy development. I think it is even as sophisticated as to allow people to nominate where they would like a tree to be planted within the city as part of one of the consultations that have occurred.
We utilise the broadest range of communication channels available to us. That includes some popular United States-based social media channels as well as our own earned activities through—
Mr Parton: Any Chinese-based—
MR BARR: I do not know that we have necessarily gone so much into the TikTok space, Mr Parton. You certainly appear to be leading the way there. Whether the content is necessarily that good is another matter.
MR DAVIS: A supplementary, Madam Speaker. Chief Minister, can you talk me through exactly how government weighs the feedback provided by the YourSay panel on government decisions?
MR BARR: We have a regular series of community surveys. We have been surveying community attitudes, for example, to COVID-19 public health measures, the vaccination program and a range of different questions that are asked. We have also surveyed the panel on how often it would like to be surveyed just so that we can get a sense of community willingness to participate.
The results of surveys are presented to cabinet and then ultimately publicly released. They are weighted against the city’s demographic profile, so we have both a geographic and a demographic weighting. Most surveys have demonstrated pretty clear community views, as in two-thirds, three-quarter majorities on particular issues,
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