For my Year 6 homework I was asked to write a letter to my local member of parliament, about an issue that I care about. I started writing a letter to my local member who is Peter Garrett AM MP. I told my mum that I had found out that Mr Garrett is also the Federal School Education Minister for the whole of Australia.
My Mum then told me he was a famous singer too. His band was called Midnight Oil, so I listened to the first song that came up on Youtube (Beds are Burning) and it was terrible :-) My dad likes him, maybe because he is a very bad dancer too.
After that I stopped writing my letter, because I knew it was not going to do as much as social media can. If you see an injustice, it is better to publicly post it and your opinion, and then hope your message will spread. Even if my letter was detailed and convincing, it would not be as persuasive to a politician, as hearing the same (or even shorter) message from 1000 different people. Last year, I learnt how much I can achieve with the help of others. Through my petition, many people now know the name of the Black Box inventor. I am still working on having him permanently recognized with an airport named after him. I am now using the twitter hashtag #RenameCBRAirport
I made my video on the life story of David Warren. I care deeply that Dr David Warren should be a household name in Australia, if not the whole world!
Figure: Peter Garrett and all Australians take for granted save air travel
I have tweeted Mr Garrett… I hope he agrees with me and retweets.
I hope this issue is worthy of your attention too, and I can get you to use your Twitter and Facebook to spread my message to your politician.
I need to convince many politicians. So I collected the twitter addresses of the MPs of Australia who have a twitter address. I am now happy to tell you that I have a page to make it easy for you to tweet your local member. (Thank you Damian for helping me).
Figure: Go to my ‘Tell a Politician’ page to tweet your local member: http://evecogan.wpengine.com/tell-a-politician
Figure: Which Australian Politician will tweet their support for David Warren?
Go to my ‘Tell a Politician’ page to ‘Tweet’ your local member
Or click ‘Share’ on this facebook post (on facebook.com/EveCogan.Australia)
I wonder which politician will be the first to retweet?
-Eve
Eve, I’m happy to lend my support to your wonderful campaign – as a electrician, engineer, and general tinkerer I am proud that we have such amazing talent within this country and agree that we should honour it.
Keep up the good work!
Kevin Baker
Liberal Candidate for Charlton