Something hit me over the weekend that I haven’t been able to shake.
On Sunday night at Carlton Wine Room (my new favourite venue), I was lucky enough to sit in a room full of people who give me genuine hope – activists, organisers, founders, and advocates doing extraordinary work on causes that matter. We had gathered for a private dinner in Melbourne with former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (as you do) and his longtime chief of staff, leading gender equality advocate Katie Telford. At the off-the-record dinner there were no prepared remarks, no talking points. Just a group of remarkable young Australians talking honestly about politics, power, and what change ***actually*** requires.
At one point, Ben Vasiliou – CEO of The Man Cave, a nonprofit facilitating healthy masculinity for boys and young men (please check out their work stat) – looked around the room and said, “Imagine if this was the Cabinet table of Australia.” I think about access and proximity to power a lot. It’s central to why Missing Perspectives exists in the first place – the belief that the rooms where decisions get made are too small, too similar, and too closed off from the people who are in reality most impacted by those decisions.
But sitting at that inspiring table on Sunday, I felt that belief less as an idea and more as something personal – because the people around that table were extraordinary. They organise and advocate with only the resources they can, and build communities often without the recognition that they deserve. And still, the rooms making the big calls that shape this country have largely not made space for them. We are told endlessly that young people are the future, yet we are rarely included in these rooms and are so often overlooked.
The conversation covered a lot of ground – allyship, political disillusionment, resilience, the particular exhaustion of being an advocate for the long haul. But what struck me most was the generosity in the room. People were willing to disagree with each other, to challenge ideas, to sit in discomfort. The kind of honest conversations most of us are hungry for, but rarely get to have in a safe and respectful space.
It all goes to the core of our mission here at Missing Perspectives. Not just critiquing systems, but doing our small part in actively reshaping them: going where power is, and engaging with it directly. I want to see a world where gatherings like Sunday night aren’t out of the norm, and where young people aren’t brought into rooms as tokens or talking points, but as genuine participants in decisions that will shape their futures. We’re going to be doing more dinners like this over the coming months, so keep an eye out for details as we’re keen to get more and more young people into rooms like these.
While Ben’s comment has stayed with me all week, I’ve actually started to hear it differently.
Not ‘imagine if this was the Cabinet table of Australia’ – as though it’s a fantasy too far-fetched to take seriously.
But: why isn’t it?