For my Leadership in Action project, I spent six weeks in Melbourne, Australia, working at Electronic Frontiers Australia (EFA), a leading nonprofit organisation advocating for digital rights, privacy, and freedom of expression online. The organisation engages with policymakers, the public, and technology stakeholders to ensure that civil liberties are protected in the digital age.
After spending my first weekend familiarising myself with Melbourne and my new environment, I was given two main areas of work by the board to complete during my placement.
My first task was to contribute to a policy document intended to explain Australian digital legislation and EFA’s policy recommendations to the public. I researched government submissions on data governance, including the National AI Plan, and co-drafted a thirty-three-page digital policy positions document.
Initially, I found this work challenging: I had minimal prior knowledge of the Australian political and legal systems and was required to acquaint myself with the past thirty years of Australian digital legislation. Yet it was this challenging process that allowed me to develop. It taught me to critically assess complicated legislation and communicate legal and technological issues clearly to an audience without specialist knowledge.
My second area of work consisted of writing three two-thousand-word articles on any pressing digital rights issues of my choosing. These articles, which I wrote for EFA’s newsletter subscribers and website, aimed to raise awareness and encourage public engagement. This challenged me to open my eyes to my surroundings while in Melbourne, look beyond what was immediately in front of me, and think analytically about the issues facing Australians today.
I set myself the goal of addressing SDG 10, ‘Reduced Inequalities’, and SDG 4, ‘Quality Education’. Digital rights issues often disproportionately affect marginalised groups, including those with limited access to digital literacy or legal protections. By helping to produce accessible public information and supporting inclusive policy development, I aimed to reduce inequalities in how people understand and exercise their digital rights.
Opening my eyes to the world of digital rights in Melbourne proved to be more revealing than I had initially expected. On my first trip to Coles, I noticed advertisements explaining that the supermarket giant had partnered with the technology firm Palantir to track theft. Coming from the UK, I was surprised to see partnerships of this kind being openly promoted. This prompted me to write my first article examining the role of private technology within the Australian public infrastructure and considered what this could mean for everyday Australians.
Speaking to residents and locals then alerted me to another pressing issue facing Australian communities. Beyond surveillance, Australians communities are facing an intrusion of large-scale data centres. Seeing the scale of this issue led me to investigate the proposed data centre development in Plumpton, Melbourne, which is expected to be one of the largest data centre projects in Australia.
For my final article, I wanted to expand my knowledge of Australian communities past Melbourne. To do so, I travelled to Cairns during a free weekend. Whilst in cairns, I visited the Daintree Rainforest and heard about the Traditional Custodians of the land and the experiences of Aboriginal communities. I gained a particular appreciation of how Australia’s colonial history has shaped communities today, which encouraged me to consider whose voices are represented when discussing digital rights and government policy.
Equipped with this knowledge, I wrote an article for Victorian Human Rights Week. Here, I assessed the implications of emerging technologies such as facial recognition and biometric surveillance, particularly on marginalised communities. I argued that digital rights must be recognised as human rights and receive protection through legislation that can meaningfully represent all Australians. This work highlighted the importance of ensuring that technological developments do not disproportionately affect communities that are already vulnerable to discrimination.
By the end of my six weeks, I had contributed important policy research and public-facing articles, supporting learning and informed public debate in Melbourne. I felt I had reached my goal of working towards making complex digital rights issues more accessible and actionable for wider communities.
Ultimately, my six weeks at EFA demonstrated to me the importance of combining research with community engagement to tackle social issues. Throughout the placement, I developed a stronger understanding of how advocacy work supports and influences public debate.