About Common Endeavour

Common Endeavour is an aspiration, an intention, a hope.

It’s a project to build a political organisation that can inform and animate a new party of government in Australia. To do this from the ground up. And to do this with joy at the prospect and gratitude for the privilege we have to do this work.

Why Common Endeavour? Because we need good government. Democracy is at stake. The wellbeing of our communities and the people that make up those communities is at stake.

Political parties have an important role to play in how we govern ourselves. They bring people together to find solutions to the challenges our communities face, to set the agenda on what challenges we will tackle and how to tackle them, and to provide leadership on social issues. Political parties do this when they work well. Our current political parties are not working well.


Building a political organisation, for Common Endeavour, is a ‘caring with’ activity of trust and solidarity that we do because because we care about Australian democracy. Common Endeavour is a response to a widely recognised need for our political institutions to do better. It is our way to care for our democracy, our way of taking responsibility for doing what we can to meet the need that we see, in our politics and in our communities.

What’s the idea? We all live in mutual vulnerability. We need each other to be well and stay safe. Trust is critical to how we live together. This is where Common Endeavour begins. We take our connection seriously and this makes an ethics of care the best guide to organising ourselves as communities.

This means caring about and caring for each other. It means doing the caring work when required and receiving care well when we need it. It means caring with each other and together meeting the needs of our communities and the people in them.

We emphasise the needs of people in communities by recognising and prioritising the mutual vulnerability that comes with being human. We put lives being lived over abstract notions like efficiency and productivity. This is how Common Endeavour wants to be a political organisation that earns trust. We elevate the experiences of those whose lives are most affected by the actions and inaction of government. We emphasise an ethics of care as the political principle that guides and drives a caring democracy.

Some of the people behind our politics are: Fabienne Brugère, Joan Tronto, and Annette Baier.

The Birth of Common Endeavour Common Endeavour was conceived as an organisation that respects its members as well as the communities it strives to serve. Originally inspired by Simone Weil’s work on the damage caused by coercion in political organisations (On the Abolition of All Political Parties) and Ted Mack’s career as an elected representative (summarised beautifully in his powerful 2013 Parkes Oration, Common Endeavour aspires to model in the way it functions as an organisation the principles that guide how it would govern well. We work to foster a renewed political purpose to grow a political party that people can be proud to vote for.

Drawing on the deep wellspring of frustration and disaffection with contemporary government (is this you?), the intent for Common Endeavour is to bring together people who care about how we govern ourselves as Australian communities (is this also you?) and who want to contribute what they can to building an organisation, including a political party that’s a vehicle for voters to choose better government. That political organisation will inform its work by engaging with and listening to people and communities, working out the best solutions to the hardest problems, advocating for hard for the best solutions, and bringing citizens and communities along as collaborators in problem-solving and good government. Common Endeavour will lead the way in building a caring democracy that nourishes our communities and helps the people in them to thrive.

How to Join In? If you recognise yourself in any of this there are lots of ways you can join in and support this work.

How to Build Boldly?

This is a bold vision. This is bold ambition. This is Common Endeavour.

Three steps to a bold organisation:

1. An initial group of people come together and work to build a structure of an organisation for the Common Endeavour political party. We formalise the organisation's constitution and incorporate the organisation.
2. This organisation, Common Endeavour, goes into the community to let everyone know that we’re here and what we’re about, and invite people to join the party.
   1. Some people will become party members, some people will become issue advocates for the party, some people will support the party financially, and some of us will be all three!
3. Common Endeavour engages with communities that want Common Endeavour on the ballot in their electorate, it works with those communities to select great candidates, and it runs in elections all across the country giving voters a new choice at the ballot box, a choice they can be proud to vote for.

Let us know if you want to be one of the pioneers to build this organisation. We're working on step 1 right now!

Let us know if you want to be a member or supporter. We'll keep you in the loop as the organisation develops.

And let us know if this is the kind of party you would want to vote for. We're always up for a little encouragement! (-: But also let us know if you have other thoughts. We're also here for constructive criticism.

Building this organisation will be hard work but a joy to do together; with satisfaction guaranteed.