Interview – Amanda Tattersall

Amanda Tattersall discovered politics at five years old, watching Hawke’s triumphant election as Prime Minister.

Watching the TV show Rumpole of the Bailey with her grandma got her thinking about the law, and everyone in the family agreed - she was great at arguing.

Amanda’s an absolute force of nature, and it’s clear that was the case from the start.

She was a founder of GetUp, the Sydney Alliance and Labor for Refugees, and she makes the excellent Changemakers podcast, too.

Prolific and undeniably deeply creative in her impact, she’s also become a powerful voice in the still far too taboo space of mental health and the way our brains work.

Despite all that, she’s far from a household name - so, of course, I’ve always wanted to know more.    

Matt: There's so much to this story and I can't wait to dig into all of it. But like all good stories of self, I want to start way, way, way back. So thinking about as early as you like, like your parents, your grandparents, what sort of clues are there when you look back that far to the kind of person, the kind of things that you do now?

Amanda: Well, I often talk a lot about my grandma as a particularly important figure in my political development. And that's partly because she was quite political and she also had quite a tricky time of it when she was young. And she also was really important to me.

She was our babysitter from sort of dot to, you know, we didn't need a babysitter anymore. We would always go to grandma's to be looked after. And she grew up in North England.

She was middle class initially and her family fell into poverty. Her father was a gambler and he was pushed off a train and the family fell into poverty. And she, and they were homeless for a period of time.

They had to board with others and then became, ran a boarding house. And she would tell these stories about it at age 13. She had to leave school and she rode a bicycle to a pharmaceuticals factory where she had a job.

And it was this sort of collection of stories that talked about what it was like to not have enough and to not, and I guess it be a victim of class, of a class society even though she never saw herself as a victim. She was, but she certainly had it tough because of that. Then cast forward, she had, she had her first child just before World War I, sorry, World War II, and she lived, her husband was working for the radar, she lived and tried to grow vegetables and maintain a life under the bombs until stories of bombs falling in the street.

And so I guess the comment this sort of, she would talk a lot, she was a beautiful chatterbox kind of figure. And she, these stories of inequality, of injustice, of the perils of war, I grew up with those, I grew up with those. So I think that that's probably one important foundation of a sense of justice and orientation about the world.

My immediate family, perfectly lovely, but not very political. So they got involved in the school P&C occasionally and would come and watch me play netball, but they were and were not engaged in politics. It mainly was a occasional yelling at the television or, you know, commentary about the newspaper.

And so I was sort of interested in the world from them, but the idea of actually being driven to want to do something about it, that was very much with my grandma.

Matt: What about your parents? What were they doing? Your dad was an economist, is that right?

Amanda: He worked for an insurance company. He did an economics degree. So when I was about six years old, he started an economics degree.

Before then, he worked for an insurance company as a copywriter, a copy boy, they called them. And then he also worked briefly in construction for my grandfather's company. He sort of did all these different odds and bods jobs, but I think he struggled because he didn't have a degree.

And then when he was at AMP, he worked for it back then, and they encouraged their staff members to go to university. It was free education back then, if people remember. He did an economics degree part-time at night for several years, and then actually got a scholarship to finish his degree.

Unheard of these days, but actually that's how it worked for him. And watching him, so I watched my father go through university, and it changed our lives. It was hard for him to cut in to the workforce without an economics degree, but once he had one, it changed everything.

He became very successful in the world of business because of his higher education. And as a foreshadow, I feel like that's part of why I love being at the university now, why higher education has been an important part of my values, life, what things I care about was in part seeing how it changed him. My mum worked as a secretary when she met my dad, but then stopped working when she had kids, well, stopped formally working.

She worked from home doing a whole bunch of piecework and typewriting and secretarial skills, but out of the office space. Eventually she, when I was 15, 16, made a decision to become a interior designer. She'd been forced out of school when she was 14.

She didn't finish the school certificate because her father thought it would be a great idea for her to just go off and get a job like her sister had. But she was always quite bright and interested in the world, in particular in this idea of interior design. So while I don't necessarily think that either my parents necessarily showed me that going out and be a changemaker, they didn't give a model of activism.

What I saw in them were a whole bunch of broader values, like the value of higher education from my dad and from my mum. Part of it was overcoming your fears. The idea of her going to TAFE to do this three-year diploma when she was an adult, having had a third child, to be honest, I'm sure it scared the shit out of her.

But she did that and she sort of faced those fears because it was something she believed in and wanted to do. And I think that there's a quality that you need when you're making change that I learned from her.

Matt: Yeah, I love both those things. We're sitting here in your kitchen in Glebe, in a terrace in Glebe, which itself has had this amazingly long history and kind of like quite contested. It's like quite a wealthy area, a lot of social housing still kind of embedded in this community, a long history of activism, all this sort of stuff that like feels super relevant to the kind of conversation that I hope we'll have. But you were growing up on the north side of Sydney at that time, where were you?

Amanda: Lindfield, the leafy suburbs of Linfield.

Matt: What was life like for you?

Amanda: It was very boring, to be honest. Sorry, Lindfield, I didn't like it as a space to grow up. It was kind of lonely and isolated and I didn't find it to be very, I didn't find my people until I moved out of home in a sense.

I really feel like I found the people who I relate to and connect with once I went to university. I had a few, I was going to sound like the biggest dag. The things that, probably the groups of things that I valued the most at school was the school band.

We had a particularly great school band in primary school and an award willingly brilliant school band at high school. Went to public schools for both. And like we battled and tried to be good.

We had a great band master who was a bit like the guy from Mr Holland's Opus. There was a sort of triumphant capacity to work together. I learnt a lot about collaboration from that band.

I went to a really intense high school. I went to North Sydney Girls. It's a very selective school that's very competitive.

All girls and so very intense and has beautiful people, but it's like I don't think a great environment for you to feel your strengths because you're valued so narrowly at school as per the marks you get rather than. It's great selective schools are a great way to make really smart people feel mediocre because they pile them all together. I didn't feel like that was an amazing experience either, although the band was good as I mentioned.

I really felt that I found a space when I went to university, like when I left that space, to be honest.

Matt: I mean, that's so often the case for people who go on to do great things that school was like this, kind of it wasn't enough anyway, and it wasn't like it wasn't an easy place. I want to like go back to your grandma though, because I heard you somewhere talking about watching Rumpole of the Bailey with your grandma, you know, as a kid and that being kind of a gateway to the law, which has been a gateway to a whole bunch of other things that you've done since then. Is that a good memory?

Amanda: It really is, actually. I mean, Rumpole of the Bailey really dates me to being so old. So for the young kids, it's like watching Suits.

And I think I make this joke somewhere else, you know, Suits is far sexier than poor old Rumpole of the Bailey, this sort of decrepit old white barrister. But I found the idea of, I mean, the idea that you could just argue for justice and that it worked was really appealing because I was quite good at arguing. I was quite, you know, fancied my capacity to speak.

And so the idea that that could be the tool of justice. I mean, that's what I was seeing on the screen was fantastic. And it was also comforting watching it with my grandma.

I used to watch it with my parents as well. It was this sort of, yeah, and I think it's where I sort of romanticised that idea that I could make a difference. It was funny, though.

I remember being at school and someone, I knew nothing, like my parents really didn't know much about university. And like my dad went to university, but I also really did feel like I was like breaking around in terms of, I was the first to go to university out of school. And no one knew, so when I said I wanted to be a lawyer, what that meant, do a law degree, what does that look like?

I remember when I was at school and this woman was, young woman who was in a few years above me was gonna do arts/law. And I remember going, oh, why would you paint as well as do law? You know what I mean?

Like the idea of the arts as the humanities as opposed to arts, I just knew nothing of any of those things. But it's true that I still wanted to be a lawyer nonetheless.

So right from that time, because I also grew up in one of those families where going to university was definitely not like an assumed career path. I had no idea what the world might hold and what a university might look like. I don't think I would have even been able to put it into words that it was like an aspiration.

Matt: When you're eight years old, nine years old, 10 years old, watching Rumpole of the Bailey with your grandma, are you thinking, I am going to uni, I'm going to be a lawyer? Did you have that kind of direct sense of agency and what you're going to be doing?

Amanda: Yeah, I think I did. Maybe not eight, maybe more by the time I was like 11 or 12. Look, I also think it's, I think in some ways, and maybe this is a bit embarrassing, I think that I was trying to impress my father, who I think one time I said I was going to be a lawyer and that I saw a twinkle in his eye.

I was like, oh, this is obviously a good idea. I think that I was very, there was a sense of being externally focused about my own goals and intention early on. I actually did really feel like I struggled to work out what I wanted.

Because there was nothing around me particularly that I actually wanted. And so that became an easy hook to be able to define what I was interested in. Okay, well, off we go.

This obviously seems good. I'm good at arguing. You know, my parents think it's a good idea.

Done. And then, you know, as we'll see later on, that then unraveled, you know, and then unraveled.

Matt: And that's so much the case. The idea of like that thing that you said as a target when you're in school, like, what do you know about the world at that point? And what do you even know about yourself and who you are? You went off to uni, to UTS, arts/law - a bit of painting?

Amanda: So much painting! Well, my mum would have helped me with the painting, I'm sure, but yes. No, I did political science and I'd worked it out by then, what it was all about.

Matt: Were you living at home or were you on campus?

Amanda: Then I was living at home, yeah.

Matt: How was it? You'd been in the northside and that was not really your place, not your people. What was it that transition like into uni?

Amanda: It was a lot of time spent in the Central Station Tunnel, that long walk from the train station. It was a funny transition. I usually, especially then was a very vocational campus, you know, like lots of people came in from work.

It's sort of on the edge of the city. Wasn't like being at the University of Sydney, for instance, I had lots of friends eventually at the University of Sydney. It felt like a very different place. I teach there now and it’s a very different place to UTS. And so I felt a little bit like I'd been shortchanged, to be perfectly honest.

Like I wished I'd known more about how the whole thing worked. And I might have gone to a different campus, but I was where I was, right? Like I was at UTS.

I quickly made a few very close friends, and those friendships became really important, I guess, in creating this space, creating a new world for me. Like I started spending a lot of time at friends, staying at friends' houses, you know, going homeless, treating the house like a hotel, I think was a famous phrase, and spending more time out of where I'd come from in this new environment. I also started to get a curiosity, but it took me a while to actually get involved in this thing called the student movement and student politics.

I was like student movement curious, but I couldn't really work out how it worked at UTS. I wanted to join a labor club, but there were none. And so instead, I joined the debating society.

Matt: You were working part-time. Were you working part-time as a lawyer?

Amanda: Yeah, I wasn't a lawyer. I was working for a lawyer, for a barrister.

Matt: Yeah, my bad. But you're working in a legal office.

Amanda: For chambers. I was a complete nerd. Like you can't underestimate the drive, the drive in this woman. No, like I was so determined I was going to be a lawyer.

Like I wholeheartedly commit to plans, especially early on. And so I worked for a barrister. I worked for two barristers at a particular chambers in the city.

I got the job through the person I did work experience within year 10, who is someone that my dad had known through work, like sort of like the only lawyer we knew. And I approached him again, did more work experience and got a job, sort of pushed myself in the door in a sense. And it was an interesting experience in that I was writing chronology.

So I don't know if anyone knows anything about law briefs, but basically a case happens. This guy was a workers compensation lawyer. So a crisis happens and then solicitors, which are one type of lawyer, will put together the whole of a claim.

They then send that brief, which is a bundle of documents, can be hundreds of pages of documents to the barrister. And then the barrister meets the client, they then go to court. And I was reading those documents and barristers have a lot of them, hundreds of those briefs and they're meant to be across them.

That's their job. And I was writing chronologies for those briefs to document what went on. And yeah, that was my job.

And so like you're at uni and you're coming in living at home, but so like, you know, staying friends and all that kind of thing. And you're getting involved in student politics and you've got this part-time job. Is that, you know, like some people, their part-time job is just working at the uni bar or, you know, like all that kind of normal stuff that people do at uni was, you know, were you sort of living that UTS life that's sort of like a bit more professional, a bit more kind of responsibilities, or how did that, how do you reflect on that?

Yeah, I think that I was trying to, I feel like I didn't have a sense of, I feel like I was doing what I was meant to do. I think that I saw that my job at that time was to sort of push through and become a lawyer. And like I'd push through at school, like I'd gone well at school and I'd studied very hard and I had spent a lot of time deferring my own joy, you know what I mean?”

Deferring it for this future goal. And I think when I started uni, I was kind of doing the same thing. And maybe that is the vocational thing at UTS.

I think it's deeper than that. Like I think that I was sort of on a mission to complete this thing. And then that changed, you know, that changed.

And in some ways, you know, like silver lining to all the crises that we have in the world, but I'm glad that that sort of deferral of joy plan I had for myself was disrupted.

Matt: The other thing that happened early was you turned into a rusted on Labor supporter watching Hawke get elected.

Amanda: Oh, right. Yeah. When I was very young.

Matt: You landed at uni, you want to do student politics and you've been rusted on for, you know, the good part of your life by then.

Amanda: Yes, it's a strong phrase saying rusted on. I wouldn't have necessarily put that, you know, label on myself, but definitely I was supportive of Hawke and Keating, right? And they were these sort of bigger than life figures that seem to embody, they seem to embody all the things I cared about in terms of being sort of progressive and caring and, you know, even indigenous rights, you know, like there was just, there seemed to be a sort of warmth to what they embodied that I connected with.

And it's true, I was five years old when Hawke was elected. And I remember that day in cheering and on the side of my family and, you know, in mock critique of some other side of my, you know, my grandparents who were pro the Liberal Party at the time. And so, you know, there was certainly like some of that pantomime of politics was definitely playing out.

And I had that belief and interest. That's why I was looking for the Labor Club, right? As you as you mentioned.

But I wasn't from a family of of Labor supporters. And I think that and I think that is different because I think that when you turn up at university, the people you tend to meet who are in the Labor Club are. And I didn't feel like I was part of that club at all.

Matt: How did your family react to that? Was it weird to them?

Amanda: That I eventually got involved?

Matt: That you were at five years old - you know, like this is this is the course for me.

Amanda: I have no idea! You should ask them. I've got no idea.

I imagine that my dad exhibited a level of pride that I had strong opinions and these thoughts about the world and that I was going to be a lawyer. Like there was a sense of I felt that that felt like it was positive. I think maybe they thought I was very strange to be so political.

I wasn't it wasn't something I paid a lot of attention to.

Matt: When you land in student politics, you're at UTS, you've sort of gravitated to to being involved in student politics. What was it like when you first got involved?

Amanda: Well, you can't understand the story of me involved in student politics or understanding the fact that I had a psychosis at the end of my second year. Like that's sort of a critical part of the story. So by the end of my second year of university, I had been involved, I had met some friends I was interested in the student newspaper and we ran a ticket and won the ticket to edit the newspaper Vertigo.

But by the end of that, so I was interested in student movement before I got sick. But in December that year, I was hospitalised for two months with the psychosis. It was very serious.

I was very sick and as I recovered, one of the things that I decided was that I wanted to have my life have meaning and make a difference and that I was interested in this student movement space, this changing the world space, this make the world better space, the space that my grandma had echoed, that my dad had been a beneficiary of, that I'd seen briefly in the student movement so far, that that's the places that I was interested in and that the law I know I'm very diligent. I did finish my degree but that actually that was of less interest. And so I then did get involved in the student movement.

But in terms of finding my people, well, the sadder thing is actually firstly that most of the people I knew shed themselves from me. Like mental health is not loved these days. Let's go back basically 30 years from now.

It's just under 30 years. It was taboo. And I was completely cut off.

Like people just absolutely stepped back. It was made easy when I was at university. I had to go part time.

And so I sort of fell out of sync with a lot of the people who I'd been at university with. But that just created a really convenient space for people to not have to have any contact with me at all. And so I felt like I kind of had to rebuild my life again.

And I did slowly and when, as I did, the people who I built relationships with were people that were involved in this student movement space. And so finding my people, thankfully, yes, I did find my people. And they were both important to me as people who cared about, you know, labor politics or whatever, but they were also personally important to me because they...

Matt: They were there.

Amanda: Yeah, they were, friends. And this stuff wasn't a secret. Like it wasn't a big topic of conversation, but they were still friends with me despite it.

When, you know, when I'm listening to you, I get the sense of like this just kind of unstoppable train, kind of, you know, like building up through school and doing really well and then going off to uni and doing really well and coming up against this, you know, like really crashing after this NUS conference and winding up in Hornsby Hospital for a couple of months and no one's there, and you're like isolated. And how, I mean, obviously, that's a, that just sounds like an extraordinarily challenging experience to go through, and the social isolation and all that kind of stuff, everything that's difficult. But also like it must feel like in a way that maybe you just couldn't have got off that train that you were on if you hadn't hit that wall as well.

Yeah, people, you know, like there's lots of language that is used in the sort of mental health and neurodiversity community, which is sometimes your body does for you, or your mind does for you what your body couldn't, like I couldn't consciously make a decision to not do that thing so your body pulls you out. I don't know. I mean, in some ways, we can't be in, we're never in control of necessarily what happens to us, we're in control of how we respond to it, right?

That's where the agency is. And it was a shitstorm that happened to me that for whatever reasons did, you know, that I can't go back and change. I am proud of how I responded to it.

Matt: You came back from that and clearly had a sort of sense like you're gonna get through the law degree, but like you've got a much clearer sense of where you wanna go. Following year you were running for president of the NUS NSW.

Amanda: The National Union of Students.

Matt: As someone who's never involved in student politics and has sort of found my way in various ways to being involved in politics, it always felt like such a circus, the world of student politics.

Amanda: Oh, it's ridiculous. It's everyone's trying to sort of like, you know, cosplay politics, but doing it in a really odd way.

And like for a lot of people, after the experience that you've gone through, the thing they would do is like lick their wounds and gather their wits and, you know, and you threw yourself into this extraordinary circus. What was that like?

It was both medicinal and toxic. So medicinal in that, that felt like a space of purpose and action. Like the thing that happens when you hospitalise with a mental illness is you don't feel like you've got a lot of power.

Indeed, most of your power is taken away. You're literally locked up. And you're also told that you're useless and given a lot of medication.

A lot of agency is put with others, not with you. And so in contrast, actually, all this involvement in the student movement felt like a form of agency, right? It felt like I was able to do things.

I mean, I spent a year doing virtually very little stuff. Let's just be clear. I did get better properly.

But then I did move into this, you know, slightly more soberly manic set of activities. But I think that what I found attractive in it was that I was with a community of people who I really loved and trusted and I felt like I was doing something positive in the world. It felt like it was agencies.

So that was the great thing about it. We had a plan and all this sort of stuff. And people saw more in me than I saw in myself.

And it was a very sort of, there was something very valid. I could, you know, going to hospital had made me feel pretty small. And this process made me feel less small.

And so that all those things were really positive. The challenging thing was that both when I was involved in the student news, I ran for the student newspaper again. And we ran and we ran because I didn't get to do it the time before.

But when I was involved in the student newspaper and then later when I was running for NUS president, people started punching me in the face for having had bipolar and psychosis. So I had people going around behind my back shaking medicine bottles, pretending that I hadn't taken my medication or accusing me of being unstable and unable to do things that hadn't taken my medication or being unstable. And so forth when I was running for NUS president, one of the people from the other faction said the same thing.

And there's kind of nothing you can do when someone comes at you like that. You know, like, what words can I say?

Matt: It's almost like anything that you do validates.

Amanda: Yeah, like if I get yelly screamy, probably. Exactly. Like there's literally, there's nothing.

There's nothing I can do except hope that other people won't be as prejudiced, that people can see through the narrow vindictiveness that sits behind their attack on me. That's all I can hope for because I can't, like what is it even if I'm defending myself, I look like I'm crazy. So, I mean, I was fortunate that most, many, at least enough of the times that fell on defuse.

I was elected NUS president despite the attacks, but that was the toxic side, this sort of, and it's not unlike how I've walked in life for 20 years since then, like walking as I have strength and capacity, and also that if someone was to undermine me for being crazy, they can. I have been crazy. It's true.

But if people want to use that as a way to delegitimise me, then that's an available weapon that I hope says more about them than me, but at least now I feel like if I talk about it, I defang it as a weapon.

Matt: We're two decades and a bit on from that era, and it feels like there's been a paradigm shift around mental health, but those kind of questions are still so, carry so much, don't they?

Amanda: We still use a language around President Donald Trump and call him crazy. It happens all the time, and we think that's okay because he really is crazy.

Actually, the idea that we.. what's the one that they used to say that people are delusional?

There's an absolutely socially acceptable language to accuse people of not being good by making reference to their mental health. We live with that. It's changed form a little, but I think that there's got a little way to go.

Matt: Over those next few years, you got more and more involved in the Labor movement. You established Labor for Refugees, I think it was around 2001. Deputy Assistant Secretary in Unions New South Wales.

Amanda: Deputy Assistant Secretary, got to get that acronym right! I feel like I'm in The Simpsons, going to be Junior Vice President Associate.

Matt: You were involved in these absolutely huge demonstrations against the war in Iraq, quarter of a million people.

Amanda: We said it was 500,000.

Matt: Yeah, of course. It probably was.

Amanda: One million people!

Matt: There are always debates over these things, as it plays out every time there's a rally. That was an era when there were just people rising up in extraordinary numbers. What did it feel like to be part of that movement at that time?

When you're talking about getting involved in student politics and these things, I couldn't help but think about you being in Lindfield, being in the school band and that sense of that being at home. Do you think there's something that carries on from that about having a structure, having that sense of being part of a community that's doing something that's great together?

Amanda: I feel like there's six questions in that question. In terms of, what was it like to be part of that growing social movement? I mean, it was extraordinary and I was fortunate because I was in the union movement.

And like I think it's, you know, the unions tragically are not as strong as they were at that time. That time, there was quarter of the workforce. And it wasn't long after I finished my degree, and we set up Labor for Refugees that I ended up working with John Robertson and a whole team of people at Unions NSW.

And at that time, the movement was a social movement union. Like they were so engaged. And it was weird, right?

Because Unions NSW was Labor right, you know, factionally not my faction, you know, like a Labor right organisation that had traditionally not been opposed to any wars. They supported the Vietnam War, but they shifted to be much more socially engaged. And so to be involved in all these different community protests that included the global fight against, you know, the World Trade Centre, you know, if people remember Battle of Seattle, all that was in that time as well.

Like it was really quite an electric time of global and local protest. And to be in the union movement that sort of have resources and capacity and interest and willingness to sort of help spread it and seed it was extraordinary. I mean, the thing that I valued so much about unions, well, the movements at the time is why I ended up going and doing research on coalition building was how broad-based it was.

And we weren't very good at the coalitions that we built. Like the coalition that organised the walk against the war protests against the war in Iraq ended up pulling itself apart in this disastrous ideological fights. But there was this interest and attempt to be unions and churches and Liberal and Labor and Greens and community.

Like it was really it had this hope and aspiration to be really broad-based. And I found that, I mean, that was electric. Being able to work with people who are really different.

I mean, it was also electric in the peace movement times. I was mentored by a guy called Bruce Childs, who was a senator, former senator, Labor left, very progressive. Peter Murphy, similar.

He wasn't a senator, but he was very progressive. And they had been involved in the Vietnam movement and they'd been involved in the peace movements, the Hiroshima Day movements in the 1980s. And they took me under their wing and sort of taught me these lessons about how things working, about infiltration, like there were infiltrators in the movement, right, to teach all these sort of things.

I had not, you don't know what you don't know. And being, I was like participating and I was being mentored in the art of protests at the time. And I mean, that's in part, like it just was, it was extraordinary in terms of the learning, the reflection, the sort of this exhilarating change.

And in terms of, yeah, like you're in a community of people that is making change and feels like life is meaningful, right? Felt like there was purpose.

Matt: There was this enormous scale. It just felt like it was getting bigger and bigger. And then we had the election result where, you know, like in a way in retrospect, like, is it good that Howard got in? I mean, it would have been terrible if Latham had got in, clearly in retrospect. But that result, like, you know, was like a slap in the face at that point, right?

Amanda: Yeah, but, you know, like the idea, like the Labor Party needs to look at themselves in the mirror, well, not in the mirror necessarily. They'll have a look at the fact that Mark Latham was the leader. Like, that was such a desperate moment.

Like, they all knew that he was, you know, like not appropriate, but they put him there because they thought he was expedient. And expediency doesn't work in politics. And that election was, you know, and use a lesson that should be taken on more.

We wrote to him when we did Labor for Refugees, we wrote to every politician, he wrote back a five page diatribe about how terrible our position was, that we then turned into a framed picture and auctioned off to raise money for Labor for Refugees. It was a great form of jujitsu against a very angry man.

Matt: I guess like that was, I don't know, that was like a low point, right? You know, there had been all of this organising, there had been this momentum, Howard won both houses, and you went off and did your PhD on organising. You went over to Cornell in the States. Was that sort of a sense that, you know, like it hadn't worked?

Amanda: Yeah, absolutely. Like I was, since it hadn't worked, like so things always happen at two scales with me. Cognitively, it hadn't worked.

We had, and I had no idea what to do differently, right? Like, like it's one thing to, it hasn't worked. Oh, let's try this option.

I did not know what to do. I just knew that we'd tried this coalition. It was completely, and it had broken and that there was no political base for a progressive, even mildly progressive government.

But also I was, there was a mental health aspect to it as well. Like I was, the consequence of it being so hopeless was that I was quite depressed and I needed a different space to be as well. Like where I was not having to rush from tactic to tactic, from action to action, like where I could just think and be and consolidate my thoughts.

So there was sort of these two tempos that were both saying, I need to pull back. And I'd always wanted to, I don't even know exactly why I'd wanted to do a PhD. I think it's because I, like I just have always had a bit of a nerdish side.

Like I just quite like philosophy and theory and conceptualising stuff. I had liked that since school. And so all those ideas came together.

And then this mentor that I had in the union movement, because initially I was actually thinking of doing it on race and refugee politics. And she went, well, if you're going to go do a PhD, you've got to make it useful. So these important questions that we're talking about.

And it was, I had just given a talk about coalitions. I was like, oh, we should just do the PhD on coalition building. Hence why I did it.

Matt: And so connected into so many things that have come since. But like about the same time, like pretty much exactly the same time you found yourself in a cafe with Jeremy Heimans with this, you know, maybe shooting the breeze about all this stuff. And that led to GetUp, right?

Amanda: Yeah, it's true. In January, he came back of December, January, and we're in Oxford Street. Yes, we talked about this idea of GetUp.

And look, he was hilariously ambitious, which is great. Jeremy is very ambitious and bright guy. I did think that they wouldn't be able to do it without someone like me who could actually broker the relationships on the ground.

Like I can have good ideas too from space, but you know, like you've got to know what the landscape is on the ground. And I knew the political landscape and they had the wrong ideas, bless them. Like they were going to go talk to the Labor Party.

It was like that will absolutely fail. Because that's how the how MoveOn had worked. MoveOn had been built a relationship with the Democrats.

And I said to them, no, that's a mistake. We should, but the union movement is a viable space to be able to build a relationship. And it was only a couple of days after we chatted that I, they met with John Robertson and then John connected them with Bill Shorten and then an actual base for building GetUp happened, which was built out of my office actually at Unions NSW for several months before it formed into its own being.

Matt: I mean, there's so much connection between MoveOn and the Democratic movement in the States and, you know, like DNC bosses who are at MoveOn. GetUp always felt like much broader?

Amanda: Well, it's just that, like it's completely influenced by the way in which the electoral system works, right? They have non-compulsory voting, so they need to do base building. So, actually just turning out Democrats matters.

In Australia, it's compulsory voting and so actually persuasion matters and building a broader constituency matters. And actually, if you're advocating outside of election cycles, you need to talk to both sides of politics. So, actually the political cultures created by the sort of jurisdictional rules mean that you need a slightly different orientation, which of course you do, right?

Of course context is going to influence strategy. There's heaps to borrow from overseas, but those differences have shown up in the sort of organisational form of GetUp.

Matt: I spent a bit of time in the team at GetUp, and we always kind of harked back to that time with those incredible walks across the Harbour Bridge and that sense of momentum and the fact that it had all kind of, you know, crested and then flowed away as being kind of the job of GetUp.

Amanda: That was the story. I mean, I feel like that was the elevator pitch we gave everyone. You know, we marched across the bridge and we marched for peace and everyone walked away.

We need them on an email list. That was the pitch, right?

Matt: And in 2005, you know, like, so this is all happening. 2004 kind of going to 2005, you have the Cronulla Riots. We just felt like such, there's a lot of like things are bad elsewhere. This was like, no, here in Sydney, there are real problems.

Amanda: Yeah, and, you know, foreshadowing the Sydney Alliance, right? That, I mean, GetUp didn't actually, like, mobilising has tremendous strength. Digital campaigning, mobilising is extraordinarily powerful.

But mending relationships across difference was not one of them. And so, you know, this, for me, the Cronulla Riots foreshadowed what I ended up doing with the Sydney Alliance very much. And, you know, just as a reminder that, you know, in a space of, you know, when we want to make a difference, there are just different strategies that we use to be able to, to do things based on the different objectives we have.

If we want to overcome tension around difference, we need something that's talking about building, like the capacity to understand each other and build relationships across difference and alliance. That's different to mobilising large numbers of people to sign a petition or to engage in a campaign because those people already agree with you. And so sometimes mobilising was useful and GetUp plays an incredibly important role when we need to coordinate those who already agree with us and then organising or alliance building is powerful when we need to find something new and create an understanding that doesn't already exist.

Matt: GetUp also benefited from, you know, there was a technology deficit at the time, right? There were these tools that were just starting to emerge, MoveOn, the Howard Dean campaign, Obama, had built this stuff out and it sort of made sense, it was fast. There were all these kind of type A, kind of really alpha kind of people who were like pushing things forward, moving really fast, a bit of a crash and crash through kind of.

Amanda: Yeah, I know, so Elon Musk stuff vibes all over it. But yeah, yeah, no, but the technology was so fantastic in that it did offer a scale, you know, and everyone loved the word scale, even though it's a much more complicated term that's often used to create participation. And it was good.

But it has a place, it really does have a place.

Matt: You know, now, you know, it's quite a long way on from that time when you first kicked off. And the climate is so different. You know, all that technology is so much more democratised now.

Amanda: And not democratised, one could say.

Matt: Absolutely. You know, there's lots of, you know, really a lot of nuance to that. But every organisation can have access to this technology. And that role that GetUp played then of mobilising and kind of like bringing people together feels like it's less effective than it was at that time. They are certainly playing that less of a central role in kind of some of those big political debates that are happening. And a lot of the bit players or the smaller focused organisations are elevating. How do you reflect on, I guess, like what it was like, you know, a sense of like what was achieved, but also like the role of that organisation now?

Amanda: I think that nothing lasts forever. And if you're not changing and evolving and reflecting on what you're doing, you're probably dying a little bit.

And I think that that challenge has happened to an organisation like GetUp, right? Like, I don't think that the challenge it faces recent, when I think they struggled with the advent of social media, to be honest. Like, it's been there for this challenge has been there for a while as things keep innovating.

You got to work out how to respond to it. And there's not a cookie cutter approach like that requires thinking. And thinking is slow.

GetUp was built on fast, and rewarded fast, fast sort of reactive behavior. And I think, to me, the lesson in, in the sort of story of GetUp is that we just need lots of different cultures, including pace and speed, in our organisations for them to be vibrant. And to not take it for granted, it's so easy when you're riding high to think it's all going to be cool in the future and that arrogance or hubris or whatever.

You know, often we just miss it and we bite us in the arse. And it happens all over the place. It's not just GetUp, like, you know, it happens all over the place.

But a richer, healthier culture is one that is able to creatively think. Like, that's deeper than just going, oh, do we need to use the next digital tool? That's not actually the question that's being asked of us.

The question that's being asked of us is how do we, in what way do our strengths as a space to involve people in political action are best maximised? And what should we do to enhance those given the changing environment? Like, for instance, like, in GetUp, you know, I was on the, I left the board in 2015.

So I sit here more as an observer than anything else. But you know, there's many years at GetUp where I've been part of conversations where people have talked about wanting to take on organising. It's like madness, madness, partner with organisers and give them resources.

But the idea that one thing can be a monolith and have all the answers for everyone everywhere is also hubris, right? Like part of, if we want to have an ecological understanding, this book I'm writing, People Power in Cities, coming out in a few months, right? Makes this argument about there's an ecology of people power and there's just different ways to involve people in change, and they each have strengths and weaknesses, and knowing the strengths and knowing the weaknesses is really important.

Part of my thinking, and they all should fit together, organising and mobilising and playing by the rules and prefiguring and running for office, they all have different roles, they all have different strengths. How do we configure our relationships across these strategies rather than trying to be everything to everyone? I feel like if everyone in social change just pulled it back and tried to just be their best self and not try and be everyone would be in a much better place.

Matt: Yeah, and be okay with the idea that you don't have to be all parts of the system.

Amanda: You don't.

Matt: There can be, you know, it's great for someone else to do a really great job of that piece.

Amanda: Exactly. Limits. Like I've given a talk recently about embracing our limits is not a bad thing.

And it's true of this too. You can't do everything. You can't fix everything.

And embracing our limits means we can focus on being amazing inside the confines of our limits rather than trying to just be wafer thin.

Matt: Which is a really great segue to you going off and forming this other organisation, which did that other piece.

Amanda: Yeah.

Matt: That slow coalition building, bringing all these different organisations and people together. I mean, in some ways, was that an antidote having been in that past?

Amanda: I feel like, yeah, it's like a bipolar choice of my career, right? Like doing hot and cold. The Sydney Alliance was very different to GetUp.

And I think is more where it probably is a bit more my heart. Like I feel like my, I did a lot of social movement work when I was younger, and I felt like I found the limits of that even during the war in Iraq. And this also, and the Sydney Alliance was an answer to that.

It also was an alternative to GetUp. It was quite joyful doing both, still having a play in both, right? Like to, you know, not everything can fix everything.

So, you know, not one thing can fix everything. The Sydney Alliance came out in part. So when I did my PhD, two of those years were spent in the US and I did my two case studies, but I also like, I was just talking to everyone, everyone and anyone going to things, running around the place, trying to, I guess, just scope answers as to how we could make change better.

And I had known about Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals book and Reveille for Radicals and I cold called the Industrial Areas Foundation and did their training, and found their training very, both irritating and extraordinary at the same time, like all good things, right? Like it really get got under my skin, came back to Australia and decided that I would bring that practice to this country.

Matt: I felt like that reading Rules for Radicals as well, just infuriating and also, like obviously illuminating as well. But there's another thing that I was going to mention it earlier in the conversation. When you were 17, you did a school project where you got on a train and left Lindfield and went over to…

Amanda: To Lakemba.

Matt: To meet Maha Abdo, who is an incredible leader in our city. And that must have been part of laying the seeds for this as well, right?

Amanda: Of course. Well, she would say it's the hand of bloody God that brought me there, you know, like, and, you know, I'm not here to fight that. Like it was magic.

You know, it was magic. Actually, how it happened was my mum dropped me there on the way to King's Grove.

Matt: So it wasn't a train.

Amanda: And I caught the train home from Lakemba.

I mean, she was extraordinary then. She was so generous with her time.

And then when I was building the Sydney Alliance, I went back to her and she became a key, key, key leader in the Alliance. And then since then, and still to this day, is a fundamental mentor of mine. Like we are in close relationship.

I honoured and treasure my connection with her, which, you know, on the surface, I see I did this little girl who grew up in Lindfield, my mentor is a Muslim woman from, whose office is in Lakemba. Sounds absurd, but it's the most, how could it be any other way, right?

In my life, like it's, it's the, it's the most extraordinary, but most powerful connection. It's been a profound relationship for me.

Matt: I can't really speak to that, but I get a sense of how deep that is. There's a tendency to like work towards scale and work towards speed of impact. And clearly that's the GetUp model that we were just talking about.

How do you kind of like make the most change? And sometimes that's sort of a false economy because you make the most change. I've been thinking about this a lot with the kind of concept of yarning in Aboriginal culture and that sometimes, you know, there's this false economy of trying to like force yourself to a fast decision, but you constantly make the wrong decision.

Whereas that sort of round and round around a kind of a complex topic until you get to the answer might feel slow, might feel frustrating, but might actually be faster, might actually be a more effective as a way of getting to the end point. This organisation you formed had like Cancer Council of NSW, the Jewish Board of Deputies, the Nurses' Association, Muslim Women Australia, the CFMEU, organisations that don't normally play together.

Amanda: The Catholic Archdiocese.

Matt: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it must have been, there must have been times where it was excruciating and frustrating as well.

Amanda: Yeah, of course, of course. It was, it was all of what you could imagine and much of what you can't, right? Like, just on the speed thing, it's interesting how different cultures, the etymology of the idea of fast in different cultures.

So it came about in English, the early advent of capitalism in the sort of 1300s and 1400s in, where fast went from being like fasting to moving quickly. And it's always seen positively. In Islam, in Arabic, in the Quran in particular, there's a lot, many references to the idea of fast as haste, hasty decisions.

And I think, you know, just to sort of, I guess, reiterate what you were saying, like, what is a good decision and what is the process for creating a good decision is not necessarily fast. It can be fast. Like if you're in the pandemic and we need to get a vaccine and you don't act, I don't want Scott Morrison's blindness.

Just don't. But only haste, which, you know, which can happen in many organisational cultures. Like often in GetUp, it was a highly rated, like fast processing speed, right?

It doesn't necessarily produce the right decision. But yeah, there were heaps of frustrating. I mean, goodness gracious, can you imagine?

Like there were so many cultures, there was identity-based, you know, difference cultures. You know, we did have, you know, Jewish Board of Deputies and different ethnic and cultural organisations, different unions, all of whom can, you know, like all of whom brought their, who they were as different people. But then they also bought all their different bureaucratic baggage.

We prefer voting, we prefer consensus. We like consensus by 60 per cent. We think that boards should act like this.

We think, you know, there was a mind-field of clashing. This is the right way to do it. This is the right way to do it.

And, you know, that is natural and tricky. And I guess the way that organising sought to move through that was to create a common language around how to work, which was called community organising, which is basically a language about how to be effective in public life, to build relationships before we move to action, to have a cyclical process for change. A few pretty straightforward frameworks, which, let's be honest, I was still learning at the same time.

Like, it wasn't like I was some master and everyone else was new. I was like one step ahead in the crib guide, you know, like it was all wild. But that language became an anchor to practice.

Matt: You know, when I think about an organisation like GetUp, you're thinking about like policy reforms and changes that happen as a result of the work, as like great accomplishments of that work. And I was thinking about Sydney Alliance. And in a way, like, you know, one of the moments that stood out most for me was when I was at GetUp, organising these vigils for, you know, a young man (Reza Berati) who was killed.

We did these vigils at Town Hall Square. And I found it, I mean, incredibly moving and in a really deep and intangible way, the people who turned out, the response, all that kind of stuff, but particularly having all these faith leaders come together with this sense of trust and this kind of like a sense of trust.

Amanda: Because you know, I organised them. Like I called around six or seven religious leaders in the city from the Sydney Alliance on the Friday, and they happily turned out on the Sunday because we were in relationship. And this was the power of mobilising meets organising positive sense, which is they were happy to do it because they were in relationship with me. And it wasn't like I was like calling on a failure last minute random. It was a person they trusted who could explain it to them and they could make a decision and come in to a mobilise.

It was a magic making. That's the best relationship between mobilising and organising.

Matt: In reflection, do you think of that holding environment of trust as being, I feel like that's the great accomplishment of the organisation in a way.

Amanda: I think that is the great accomplishment of Sydney Alliance. I think sometimes people hold up. I remember a friend of mine, I've written about this, a friend of mine said, you know, we'd been doing the Alliance for four or five years and we want to lift at Ancliffe train station.

And they went, all this organising and all you've won is a lift. And it's like, Ouch, but also, fair call. Like, what are we doing?

And then it really sent me, you know, sometimes those statements can send you on like, where is this? Like, what is this helping me think about? And I think that the thing, the enduring legacy of the Sydney Alliance is how it changes people as individuals because it brings them into relationship with a sort of diverse network that they never would be in relationship before.

And actually being in those relationships, not just being friends, but actually doing stuff together in public life is transformative. And then this, then what that incubates for the possibility of change. So when we had the siege, the horrendous siege at Martin Place, where a person took on terrorism and proclaimed to be Islamic, of course, they were not acting with the Islamic values and they held people hostage.

That could have really moved terribly. But the fact that we were in all these relationships meant that people mobilised very, very quickly in support of the Muslim community and in support of the city. And like a moment that could have been like the Cranella Riots, wasn't like the Cronulla Riots because we'd incubated these relationships.

Matt: And people like Maha Abdo stepped up as serious city leaders at that moment. You know, like it was kind of amazing to watch that, you know, it wasn't necessarily a conversation that was happening, but there was a real sense of that precariousness of the city at that moment.

I want to ask you about, you know, the challenge of you finishing up at Sydney Alliance. You know, you had another psychosis and you're navigating and holding all these pieces together. You know, you're a parent, were you a parent at the time?

Amanda: Two very young boys.

Matt: Great responsibilities. It's no wonder that you were pushed kind of to the edge of what you're capable of. Feels like it was a real kind of catalyst for the things that you've done since. Can you talk to that?

Amanda: Sure. Oh, no, of course. So yes, just so people are clear, I had a psychosis and then at my return to work meeting, I was sacked.

That's what happened. And then for what it's worth, three years later, the Alliance as a whole, including the board, apologised for what they'd done in a public event. So it was also like one of the, not the worst, but like one of the negative experiences of my life.

But then this reconciliation has also been profound and a credit to them. I mean, it took a lot for me to be able to walk into that space and have engaged with them again, but it also took a lot for them to do the same. So full respect to the Alliance community for that.

I look at that time. Look, I think there's a lesson out of my time at the Alliance, which and I think it's true for any organisation, which is that people having a mental illness is not simply a person or responsibility. The truth is that if we are in highly stressful difficult work environments or schooling environments, those institutions play a role as just whether we thrive or we dive.

And I think that that's also part of what was difficult about the Alliance was that that role was impossibly stressful and it showed up in my mental health. And it's true, I had two kids and other stresses in my life, but I reckon if my job was as stressful, I wouldn't have had a psychosis. But we will never know, but we'll never know.

But I do think, I guess coming out of that experience, I think to anyone listening to this, I think it's important for our organisations to think of ourselves as responsible for the kind of culture that we create and to think about how that culture is impacting on people's mental health. In terms of how that experience there has played out in my life, it took me probably two years to really recover from that experience. I wouldn't choose to go through that one again.

In some ways, it was harder than the first psychosis. We almost lost our house, very practically financially stressful, like those sort of difficulties. Then it also has been a long road.

It's been 10 years this year since all that happened. A long time to work out what I'm going to do with my life. I had a plan for my career.

I was going to be the person who brought community organising to the Asia Pacific region and lead it into the next whatever. Then all of a sudden, I wasn't allowed to do that anymore because I had my job taken from me. So I had to work out what's my role now.

Initially, that's been doing research on social change and that provided a space for me to, in a way, to heal was slow. But I also had to, speaking of limits, reimagine who I was going to be able to be and to face up to the fact that actually my mind is very excitable and if it gets overstimulated, I get elevated. And that just means that I have to minimise some level of, I have to manage the kind of stimulation that I am exposed to lest I get sick.

And it took me years to move away from being surprised by that to being adept at handling that and sort of accepting that.

Matt: Having a sense of the parameters that you work in.

Amanda: Yeah, and not ever really loving that, because that's not what I wanted to be when I got out of hospital when I was 19. When I got out of hospital when I was 19, I wanted to change the world. And now my brain is telling me, you can't do that.

That's not, you just not, you can't do it. And so now it's like me then having to work out what do I do. And the story I tell myself these days is that, well, if I can't be the one who's going to climb the mountain of social change, let me help those prepare to climb.

And so I do a podcast about making change, you know, Changemakers, I write books about how to do it. I do teaching, I do other content, you know, like I produce knowledge, I mentor, I train all those things to help others do the climb I can't do. And this is the thing about limits, which is, so at one level, a limit isn't like a borderline, a limit is something that we can creatively respond to, speaking to the theme of your podcast, right?

That actually knowing what you can't do allows you to be creative with what you have. And I feel like that is the space I'm in now, is I feel like I'm being truly creative with thinking about what it takes to prepare people for their climb and putting my whole heart and mind into that, knowing that's my contribution and everyone else can make other contributions and this is my bit to the pie.

Matt: I would say you've got quite a few contributions that you've made.

But one other thing that I want to dig into is you did step up in that Sydney Alliance meeting 2019, which must have been a really challenging experience, and yet it's almost like the sort of thing that the Sydney Alliance was designed to be able to hold, you know, those kinds of people being able to step into something that is really unsafe for them, but know that they can do it. And I feel like you've just got stronger in being able to step out and talk about the way your brain works and the challenges that you've had with psychosis and with bipolar and depression and so on. And that feels like a really important contribution as well, just because it has been so deeply taboo in our society, people who, and there has been a bit of a paradigm shift, but still a long way to go.

So that feels like a really brave and kind of singular job.

Amanda: And again, that speech was the first time, and it like opened this door for me to talk about it publicly since, like it was from that moment that I then after that, I wrote this article about in the Griffith Review, about my story about scaling change and the role of bipolar. I'm writing this book called Conscious Tribes, and the through line of the story is my story of bipolar and how actually like it's not just, oh, woe is me, I have bipolar. Like it's actually, I've learnt, it's really invited me to reflect a lot about how you make change.

Like actually living with the constraints and complexity of a changing mind has taught me a lot about social change. For instance, we talk about identity and often think of it in very rigid formal terms. Whereas actually when it comes to bipolar, my identity literally changes because of my identity over time.

You know, like it's not so formed, it's not so rigid. Maybe there's something in that for all of us to think about identity, you know, like there's, I've, I have, so I've found a lot of richness and reflection in looking at my experience. But look, thank you.

And I also recognise that actually if there had been people like me who are old, like I am, when I was 19, speaking about mental health, my experience would not have been so dark. And I, every time I publish something or release something, people will quite message me, you know, like in all the media, they'll quite message, you're, this is like what I've gone through that. And it's so, that's so small, right?

Matt: That's huge.

Amanda: Like I talk about big and small in this book. Like what is big and small? Changing someone's perspective on themselves because you're showing that it's okay.

And not you changing them, but you're like creating space for them to think differently because you're out there. That is small and it's also one of the biggest things you can do, you know?

Matt: I've got goosebumps as I, I mean, there's nothing bigger than that, right? Like it's someone feeling like they have a right to exist as they are in the world.

Amanda: Yeah. And I, you know, and also I hate using the word privilege because I think it's also too rigid, but there is some truth that I'm middle class. I do work at a university.

I have done a whole bunch of things. I can get up there and say, I'm crazy and I'm okay. And it's okay to be who you are because of these other things that I've done.

That hopefully down the line makes space for people to not feel like they have to wear a fucking badge, you know, to, you know, you don't need to be a super duper refugee to be, how would I have refugees, you don't need to be some super duper crazy person. But as someone who has good, has an older and I've got a few things under my belt, there's less people can take away from me. I feel like it's like my responsibility to do something.

Matt: Amanda, you know, this has been such a great conversation. I want to ask you three really, really appreciate the time with you. First one is what, what's keeping you up at night?

Amanda: I've like Gaza, you know, like, we've got this problem in the world and, and we don't seem to be able to be willing to deal with it. I just can't see it. It will know how it's going to, I am very, I mean, I'm worried about lots of things, you know, my initial, my fast thinking reaction to that question is, is Gaza in particular.

Matt: Who else should I speak to in Sydney, making change, doing great things?

Amanda: Maha Abdo.

Matt: I would love to speak to Maha. So if that can, if I can make that happen, I'd love that suggestion. What gives you hope?

Amanda: That anyone can make change, that you don't need to be running some, you know, hodded up organisation that like anyone can make change. And that actually, if we just were able to, to sort of step into our capacity, learn a few skills better, be more comfortable relating less fearful of the unknown and maybe a bit more patient, that it's okay if it doesn't all happen at once. I feel like that, that's what I'm, this Conscious Tribes book that I'm writing is based on the, is based on that idea.

Like I, that's what I have faith in. That if we all step up a bit, that will make a lot of change far more than if someone just becomes super dramatic.

Matt: Amanda, this has been so excellent. If people want to find out about your work, I mean, clearly they should be listening to the Changemakers podcast that you make. But what else should they be doing?

Amanda: Well, I have one of those embarrassing websites that has all my bits on it. So my name, amandatattersall.com has everything I've ever written. You can just go there.