CommonEndeavour

National Poet Laureate The National Poet Laureate is a three‑year appointment that recognises an outstanding Australian poet whose work and cultural contribution have shaped contemporary poetry and its readership.

Applications are now open!

This is long overdue but utterly wonderful that Australia is finally getting a poet laureate!

Will be announced in October. Can hardly wait!

creative.gov.au/investments-...

The ‘pleasant fiction’ of a rules-based order has been blown apart. It’s time for Australia to codify a bill of rights | Julianne Schultz What’s happening on American streets makes clear that a charter of rights does not prevent state overreach. But human rights must be more than a debating point

Is a bill of rights a good way to build social capital and social cohesion as @juliannes.bsky.social suggests?

That would be great but consider Ted Mack’s concerns that a bill of rights will politicise the judiciary and weaken democracy…

#AusPol #CommEnd

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Big Ipswich battery powers up The state Government introduces a new full-capacity grid-scale battery in response to demands for affordable and sustainable energy.

Terrific news about the Ipswich big battery. An amazing development on the old Swanbank coal fired power station site.

www.indailyqld.com.au/news/just-in...

Love this idea of “rebellious connection” from the folk at Good Conflict.

People expecting division? Connect anyway. You just might see the power of diversity in action.

Takes courage but many worthwhile things do. And you’ve got it.

www.thegoodconflict.com

The goal is to build partnerships based on common ground, rather than unchecked integration.

It will take a lot more work than simply "removing barriers" but Carney thinks it will build strength.

It's also worth considering whether there are other ways to do #connection better than we have been.

But Carney is quick to warn of the reciprocal dangers of disconnection.

“A world of fortresses will be poorer, more fragile and less sustainable.”

So instead, Canada will create "a dense web of connections across trade, investment, culture”.

#AusPol #Connection #DemocracySausage

‘The powerful have their power. We have the capacity to stop pretending’: the Canadian PM’s call to action at Davos | Mark Carney In a rousing speech, Mark Carney made the case for unity in the face of Donald Trump’s new world order. We reproduce it here

In Davos , Canadian PM Mark Carney talked about the dangers of unconsidered connection.

“Over the past two decades, a series of crises in finance, health, energy and geopolitics have laid bare the risks of extreme global integration.”

theguardian.com/commentisfre...

#AusPol #Connection

Join in the polis chat @CAPADAUS.bsky.social are running.

WHAT do you want GOVERNMENT to do for us in 2026?

Take our poll to help shape a clear message to our MPs
Vote on others' ideas
Share the poll widely: more people, stronger message.
Details & links: canberra-alliance.org.au/activity/

Why you should put down your phone and daydream instead Most people look at their phones when they have free time. But studies suggest there are serious benefits to letting your mind wander.

Daydreaming is good for social connection!

www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/202...

We know that infant, toddler & caregiver mental health are inextricably linked but the health system typically cares for children and caregivers separately.

This misses the opportunity to support children's lifelong flourishing by supporting parent-child #connection.

www.apa.org/monitor/2025...

The cutting edge of this work is showing that benevolent childhood experiences can cascade across generations and buffer against trauma.

These experiences typically come through children's relationships with caregivers.

#IntergenerationalTrauma #ConnectWell #Connection

We know parent-child relationships are important for children's health. Now we are learning that supporting safe, stable & nurturing relationships in the first three years of childhood can prevent the harm that comes from childhood adversity.

www.apa.org/monitor/2026...

#ChildHealth #Connection

#connection | Remo Ostini I’m going through a Ballpark Music phase. Going to the BPM concert last year was one of most fun things I did in 2025. As well as the energy and joy that comes with their music they often have intere...

A LinkedIn post about the ease of, and the trouble with, looking down on others.

www.linkedin.com/posts/remo-o...

A screenshot of the report's description. It says: "Early relationships are foundational for lifelong health, learning, and well-being. Mutual, meaningful, and affirming moments of connection in the youngest relationships support brain development, resilience, and social-emotional growth. These experiences, known as early relational health (ERH), can also buffer the impacts of adversity and help create pathways toward thriving children, families, and communities."

A new publication from the National Academies (USA) about the the way "mutual, meaningful, and affirming moments of connection" in our earliest relationships help build "thriving children, families, and communities."

www.nationalacademies.org/publications...

#Connection

Life was never meant to be a DIY project.

It’s also true that no one in the world can live your life as well as you.
You just shouldn’t be expected to do it on your own.

#connection #DIY

I hold this to be the highest task of a bond between two people: that each should stand guard over the solitude of the other. - Rainer Maria Rilke

Perfectly captures our need to be both alone and connected.

#connection

Agree that it’s important to state that climate report says we’ll just miss the 2030 target but miss the 2035 target by a mile.

It also noted that we achieved our biggest CO2 reduction outside Covid. So perhaps there is reason to hope for more improvement.

podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/7...

Common Endeavour’s aspiration, to represent Australian’s who care about their connectedness, wherever they are, country or city, suburbs or sticks.

Hanging out with economists did make me really think about making a lot more decisions on a fully rational basis. Economists bring a cold — not a cold-blooded, but a cold-eyed rationality to a lot of policy conversations that are very, very important. And I will never give up on that. But if you start looking at everything that way, it makes you a cold person. And so I feel like, for a while, I tried a form of being — as a parent, as a husband, as friend — that was a little bit like, That really doesn’t matter, the data show that doesn’t matter. And even though the data show that it doesn’t matter, how people feel about it matters. We’re all a lot more than what the probabilities say. Probability is very important, and data is important. But I feel like the connection between people is far more important. Decency is a virtue that has been appreciated throughout civilization. We see it. We have the ancient writings. I think it’s appreciated differently now than it has been in the past. But I think it will be appreciated more in the future and I think that decency is a kind of foundation upon which to build your life.

Stephen Dubner on what he learnt from hanging out with economists — probability and clear-eyed reasoning is important.

And what he didn’t — the connection between people is far more important.

freakonomics.com/podcast/what...

Our Common Nature Our Common Nature is a beautiful new show by Anna Gonzales of Radiolab and Terrestrials fame. It's a podcast project of Yo Yo Ma with not as much Yo Yo Ma as I was expecting but a beautiful exploratio...

A new post on LinkedIn about a beautiful podcast from Yo Yo Ma and Anna Gonzales.

Reminding us of the importance of place to who we are, and the dangers of throwing in your lot with an extractive industry.

www.linkedin.com/pulse/our-co...

The Hitchhiker's Guide to Political Psychology? "The point, in short, is that we need to talk less about politics (in the sense of arguing with people) and instead build a world where those people are likely to encounter more and thus change their ...

A thoughtful exploration of important ideas about what it means that something is being said at all, rather than the specific words being said.

Points to the important nexus between the market for ideas and the role of leadership.

in-between-days.ghost.io/the-hitchhik...

By @timhollo.bsky.social

Thank you @david-ritter.bsky.social for your informed, thoughtful interview on the 7am podcast.

It is deeply encouraging to hear someone speak calmly and clearly about all that has already been achieved while still highlighting how far we have to go - as fast as possible.

#connection #AusPol

Common Endeavour is online www.commonendeavour.org Help us get the word out! Find out and share what’s important to us; how we think; how to be part of what we’re doing

What's Common Endeavour about?

Help us get the word out!

www.commonendeavour.org

#connection #auspol #DemocracySausage

Common Endeavour Is about connection . Connection with each other between our communities with the world around us

Common Endeavour recognises that connection isn’t always easy, and yet... Connection is how we thrive is how we stay safe is the reason for Common Endeavour

Common Endeavour believes that... Political parties are important to how we live together; provide a vehicle for working out and doing what’s important to our communities; are not currently where we need them to be

The goal of Common Endeavour is to become a party of government

What's Common Endeavour about?

Connection. Not always easy but important.

Political parties are important too - but don't always do a lot to help connection.

The goal of Common Endeavour is to to be a party focused on the importance of connection.

#connection #auspol #DemocracySausage

Potato Ethics: What Rural Communities Can Teach Us about Healthcare - PubMed In this paper I offer the term "potato ethics" to describe a particular professional rural health sensibility. I contrast this attitude with the sensibility behind urban professional ethics, which often focus on the narrow doctor-patient treatment relationship. The phrase appropriates a Swedish meta …

Potato ethics, by Malin Fors, in Bioethical Inquiry is one of our best reads of the year. Not only showing the value of ordinary ethics (Veena Das) and relational ethics (Joan Tronto) but also what rural experience can teach us all about being useful.

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37043082/

#connection

The Canberra Alliance for Participatory Democracy is hosting an afternoon event on Sunday, December 14 to show how the online political collaboration tool Pol.is works.

If you’re in town in December, go along and find out what it’s about.

Register here

canberra-alliance.org.au/event/

'Parasocial' is Cambridge Dictionary's 2025 word of the year The connection someone feels with a person they don't know is captured in Cambridge Dictionary's word of the year for 2025 – “parasocial”.

"Parasocial" is Cambridge Dictionary's word of the year

One-sided relationships with people seen in media, or with chatbots, that resemble relationships with 'real' people.

These can be felt as strong connections despite people not knowing them.

#Connection

www.thenewdaily.com.au/life/2025/11...

#HealthPsychology

"The interconnectedness of fear of cancer recurrence components."

Cancer symptoms, bodily triggers, perceived risk of cancer returning, and coping strategies are all part of the fear of cancer returning.

psycnet.apa.org/record/2026-...

#Connection #Connectedness

The numbers suggest that meeting growing electricity demand with renewable energy is possible - even when that demand is large.

They also suggest that China's response to climate change is serious.

Bearing in mind that they still use a lot of coal...

Fascinating numbers from @azeem.bsky.social
📈 Data to start your week
open.substack.com/pub/exponent...

Most interesting
i. almost 90% of China's new electricity demand is met by renewables
ii. China's CO2 emissions are flat
iii. China's per capita electricity consumption now higher than Europe's