Our first guest, journalist, author, pollster, commentator, and activist Peter Lewis, has written extensively about the lessons from Australia’s Voice referendum for understanding how trust relates to participation in public life, and distrust to disengagement. 

Peter brings a long and varied career of engagement with issues relating to trust. In this episode, he also considers whether our attitudes to digital platforms such as Facebook have been changing over time, and both the potential and the limits of online collective organising. We also consider Australia’s News Media Bargaining Code, how Peter found himself on an unexpected unity ticket with Rupert Murdoch, and how AI is challenging our understanding of both trust and truth itself.

Peter was the founding director of the Centre for Responsible Technology, established in 2019 as part of The Australia Institute. He hosts the Burning Platforms podcast and has recently established the Centre of the Public Square, an initiative to build better models of citizen collaboration and strengthen civil society by imagining new methodologies and alternate technologies to anchor this public space, as an initiative of the independent think tank Per Capita. He has also founded Civility Australia, which aims to build a better model of citizen engagement by giving civil society the tools to design and execute compelling collaborations that build a broader community consensus. 

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