NSW
Call your MP
Look up your local MP in the form below for a detailed guide
to writing to them with targeted talking points
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If you have already contacted your local MP, you can have further impact by writing to Members of the Legislative Council.
Making your call
Prepare
Plan what you want to say before dialing. Write some notes or dot points to keep yourself on track. You may wish to use the discussion points below.
Be yourself
Don’t worry about having a highly polished message. Just relax, be polite and speak from the heart.
Politicians genuinely want to hear from their consituents. Political staff and politicians are nice to people professionally. Even if they disagree, they will listen politely.
Introduce Yourself
Your opening line might go along the lines of ‘Hello, I am [name] and I live in this electorate. I would like to talk to [MP]. Would he/she be available for a call, or are you able to pass on a message for me?’
If your MP is a Minister, Shadow Minister or Parliamentary Secretary, then they are very unlikely to be able to take a call. However, a non-minister (or “back-bencher”) might be free and willing to talk.
The staff member might ask you for your name and address. They need this to verify that you are a legitimate member of the electorate. They will treat your details confidentially.
Leaving a message
If they ask you to leave a message, just say the main points you want to talk about. Check with the staffer that they got it all down.
Answer any clarifying questions from the staff member, this will help them pass on the message effectively.
Ask if the MP is likely to get back to you. Leave a number or an email address where they can respond.
Be polite at all times. You are talking to a staff member, not the MP. They are just doing their job.
Finishing the call
Make sure you thank the MP or staff member for their time and for taking the call.
Emphasise that this is an important issue to you, and it could affect your vote.
Discussion Points
Concerns
Outline some of your concerns about the legislaton. You do not need to cover everything that is wrong with it, instead focus on the issues that concern you personally the most.
Some options are:
Religious Freedom
- Hollows out protections for faith-based institutions from the Anti-Discrimination Act. This will open up faith-based institutions to constant complaints of discrimination and allow judges to decide what is “reasonable” faith.
- Removes protections for faith-based schools or any religious institutions considered to be “providing services” to the general public.
Children consenting to medical treatment
- Allows young people 16 or over to make medical decisions for themselves (including life-altering surgery) as if they were an adult, regardless of their parent’s wishes.
- Permits a child under 16 to consent to medical treatment against the will of their parents, so long as a doctor says that the child is capable of making the decision, this include the use of puberty blockers.
This undermines the relationship of parents and children, and allows children to make life-changing decisions without their parent’s guidance and support.
Sex Self-ID
- Allows young people from 16 years old to change their sex on their birth certificate whenever they want, regardless of biology or surgery.
- Forces schools, prisons, places of worship, and other women’s spaces to treat people as their newly-declared sex regardless of how it impacts other people in those places.
Prostitution
- Makes prostitution a ‘protected class’ like race and disability.
- Removes laws protecting women, including against coercing a woman into prostitution.
- Permits public acts of prostitution, and soliciting prostitution beside a school or place of worship.
Commercial Surrogacy
- Allows and assists the commercialisation of surrogacy, including paying disadvantaged women in third world countries to bear a child who is then taken from them and brought to Australia.
Complexity
Note how large and complex this bill is. You might want to point out that it is 50 pages long, or that it makes over 80 changes to 20 different laws.
You could also say that the different issues in the bill are tangled up together, and there is no good way of passing parts of it without unintended consequences.
Your request
Ask the MP to reject the bill completely, and not try to cut it up or pass bits of it.
If the Government wants to address any of these issues, they should write their own legislation and consider each issue separately.