Rural Women Online Greater Shepparton Digital Intensive Keynote Address:
‘Challenges and Opportunities of the Digital Era’ by Prof Julian Thomas
This keynote address was delivered by Prof Julian Thomas, Director of the ARC Centre for Automated Decision-Making and Society, RMIT University, on 9 August 2024 as part of the Rural Women Online Digital Intensive held in Greater Shepparton. Full keynote recording and transcript below.
Journalist Anna Krien also delivered a keynote address on this topic at the North East VIC Digital Intensive in September 2024. Watch now.
Featured speakers (in order of appearance):
- Mary Crooks AO, Executive Director, Victorian Women’s Trust
- Cheryl Bourke, Corporate Services, Rumbarala
- Prof Julian Thomas, Director of the ARC Centre for Automated Decision-Making and Society, RMIT University
- Linda Nieuwenhuizen, CEO of the Committee for Greater Shepparton
- Alana Johnson, Chair, Victorian Women’s Trust
Transcript:
Mary Crooks
Good evening. I’ve loved doing that. Cheryl gave me permission. Let me warmly introduce you to Cheryl, Yorta Yorta woman, Dja Dja Wurrung woman, who’s going to give Welcome to Country. Welcome to Cheryl.
Cheryl Bourke
[Speaks in Language] Welcome to Yorta, Yorta People’s country. Today we pay respects to the eight clans of the Yorta Yorta Nation. So today we pay respects to our Elders, our Elders that are past, our present Elders and our future, emerging Elders today. The eight clans in Yorta Yorta Nation are Wollithiga, Kailtheban, Bangerang, Kwat Kwat, Yalaba Yalaba, Ngurai-illiam. So today we are respecting, we are respecting our ‘yeti billa’. ‘Yeti biller’ is our animals. Today we will respect our ‘woka’. Our ‘woka’ is our land. Today, respect our ‘walla nawala’ is our waterways. And today we respect our ‘yambinare’ our people. But today, I choose to turn to each other and say ‘gopaka, golpagaka’, and that means welcome and welcome to Yorta Yorta People’s Country today, guys and to Rural Women Online. Welcome to Yorta Yorta People’s Country.
Alana Johnson
Thank you. [Applause.]
Mary Crooks
Thank you, Cheryl. It’s my pleasure to introduce our speaker tonight at the culmination, almost the complete culmination, of our week here in Shepparton.
Mary Crooks
I first met Julian Thomas in, I think 2022, in the first phase of our Rural Women Online project, because he’s been the driving force behind, amongst other things, the Australian Digital Inclusion index, which we used heavily, drew on that in planning our Rural Women Online project. He’s the perfect keynote speaker for the event we’ve had here in Shepparton.
Mary Crooks
If you Google Julian Thomas on — now that everybody’s more literate digitally — if you google him on scholar.google.com.au, I couldn’t believe it. I gave up counting. But there’s at least a couple of 100 articles that Julian has written around issues of digital progress in society. I said to him this afternoon, it must he’s been so busy. He’s written so many.
Mary Crooks
But look, he’s a magnificent thinker in this space. He is the director of the Australian Research Center for Excellence for automated decision making in society, or ADMS. He’s Distinguished Professor of Media and Communications at RMIT University. His passion is the nexus between the digital era, which he understands at an intellectual level, a policy level, and the day to day level of community and society. He brings a human rights perspective as well to understanding the interface between digital settings and human beings.
Mary Crooks
He describes this as, quote, “the volatile and fluid relationship between digital communications and society”. I think many of you will share this view. We’re at an extraordinary point in our society in terms of the digital era. It’s not new. We’ve been dealing with the digital space for many decades now, but there is something different and challenging now and ahead of us.
Mary Crooks
So Julian as a social scientist, says he feels obligated as a social scientist to take on the difficult and challenging problems that face us. And on that note, I ask you to welcome Julian Thomas as he delivers our keynote, which is going to be recorded both video and audio, so that you can have access to it in the weeks to go. And people who have missed out on the opportunity to hear him tonight will be able to see it as well.
Mary Crooks
So please warmly welcome Professor Julian Thomas.
Prof Julian Thomas
Thank you very much Mary, for those very kind words. Listening to you talking about the Google Scholar page makes me feel very tired, but a lot, I really do need to say that a lot of our work in this space has has been a collaborative and collective effort, and I’ve just been so pleased by the fact that a number of our key collaborators in that work, including Kieran and Stephanie and many others who have been here this week, Jenny Kennedy Robyn, who was here earlier, have been part of this.
Prof Julian Thomas
As Mary said, I’ve been working in this general area of digital inclusion and the social consequences of the digital revolution for a long time, you need to understand how exciting it is. It’s how exciting it always is for somebody who works on a computer, just writes papers, does quantitative kind of research in different ways, to actually be involved with a program which is doing something really significant on the ground. It’s really wonderful.
Prof Julian Thomas
So I’m incredibly pleased to be here. We were really excited and interested. As soon as we heard about the idea for Rural Women Online and the aspirations behind it, we could see from the beginning why could be so significant, and that is something I’d like to talk about a bit tonight.
Prof Julian Thomas
I’ll say something just to start with, about what I think are some of the critical challenges and opportunities that are facing us all during the current digital transformation. I’ll say a little bit about what we have learned, what we know about Victoria and this region, and I hope, finally, to talk a bit about why I think the program we’re here part of this week is so significant.
Prof Julian Thomas
So access to digital technology is now as you know, it’s the key to how we engage with the world and how we connect to each other. Our research shows that Australians are using these technologies more than ever. This won’t surprise you. They’re spending more time online, and they’re using technology to do an ever increasing range of different things, to learn, to socialise, to keep track of money, to access health services, to entertain themselves, in short, to connect with our communities and to participate in society.
Prof Julian Thomas
And just as we are now using many different digital services and tools, and many of these have been the subject of the sessions this week, from search engines to messaging, photo apps, maps, email, all these kinds of things at the same time, many of us are also now using a growing number of different kinds of digital devices, phones, tablets, laptops, wearable devices, like watches, are increasingly popular, and they all do different things for different purposes.
Prof Julian Thomas
So we are in an exploding and proliferating digital environment. What do we know about who and how those services are being used? Who’s using them, and how are they being used? So just imagine we have 10 more or less random adult Australians. We know that of those 10, seven are going to be using the internet to learn or to study. Seven are going to be using the internet to book medical appointments or access healthcare in one form or another. Online, eight out of 10 are going to be streaming music, TV or movies, a huge change from a decade ago. Nine out of 10 are using the internet to keep in touch with family or friends online. Nine are banking online. Nine are accessing government services online. So for most of those 10 people, these are absolutely everyday technology activities.
Prof Julian Thomas
Digital technology becomes powerful when it fades into the background of our lives, when it becomes mundane and it is who and where. Then there are those seven, eight or nine Australians who are using the internet a lot. They’re more likely to live in urban Australia, than in places like Shepparton, more likely to have a university degree, they’re probably younger, and they likely live in a middle or high income household.
Prof Julian Thomas
So what about those one or two or three people who aren’t so well connected, who aren’t doing all of those things? Our research shows that even after several decades now of digital transformation, public internet over 25 years old, we still have two out of 10 of those Australians who we would describe as digitally excluded, they lack access to quality, reliable and affordable internet.
Prof Julian Thomas
Many of them, to the extent that they do use the internet, and they may use it quite a bit, but they rely on a single device, a smartphone. And as you know, while smartphones are brilliant and powerful devices, they’re not designed to do everything, and they’re particularly not designed for the whole range of work or study related tasks that many of us need to do. Those two or three also don’t have the skills to get the full benefit of technology. They miss out on the economic and social opportunities that tech provides. And that might be about the availability of a quality connection, it might be about cost, it might be about skills. It could be a combination of those things.
Prof Julian Thomas
The point is that we have failed to meet the communication needs of that significant minority of Australians. But our conversation, our organisations, our governments and businesses who all deliver essential services online are generally catering for the seven or eight or nine out of 10, rather than for the minority.
Prof Julian Thomas
If you think about it, studying or training today means using tech. Bank branches are closing or reducing hours as more and more of their customers switch to websites and apps to manage their finances. Governments and businesses are cutting back on their phone and face to face services, and since covid, especially as you know, they’ve been directing their resources increasingly towards those lower cost online services now.
Prof Julian Thomas
So digital inclusion really means that those services and platforms that we rely on need to be designed to benefit not just the seven or the eight or the nine Australians who are connected, but all 10 of them, all of them, no matter where they are. It’s about ensuring that everyone can make full use of digital technologies and the benefits they bring. And it’s also about ensuring that people are best equipped to avoid the potentially negative consequences of an increasingly connected world. And I know people have been talking about that a lot this week, but that is what we see as the most complex and significant challenge raised by our accelerating digital transformation in Australia.
Prof Julian Thomas
We know there are lots of challenges, lots of problems, but we think that the issue of digital exclusion, which I’ve talked about, is really fundamental, four reasons why. First of all, digital exclusion has the potential to reinforce and deepen social and economic inequalities that already exist in Australia. That’s the gap between regional and urban Australia as one example, but there are many others. Digital exclusion can serve to further stratify and divide our communities rather than facilitate communication and connection.
Prof Julian Thomas
Second reason, digital exclusion is also central, because many of those serious risks of harm that we encounter online that we’re concerned about, not all of them, but many of them arise when bad actors seek to exploit our vulnerabilities and our lack of confidence or knowledge of technical systems. That lack of knowledge, that lack of confidence, as we know, translates into fear and stress, even in cases where no further harm is done.
Prof Julian Thomas
Third, because digital capabilities have recently become so important for our ability to access a whole lot of other essential services, education, training, health, financial services, emergency responses, the labour market, our interactions with all of those domains have now also become digital to a significant degree. Fairer education systems and more equitable health care will necessarily depend on improving digital as well as physical services, nowhere more so than in places like Shepparton and these. So these are going to be particularly important in rural Australia.
Prof Julian Thomas
Fourth reason is because the tech and the services they use it, that use it are not standing still. So we not we don’t have the luxury of a static position where we can see what we need to do. We can take time, we can muster the resources, and we can do something about it and focus on what’s required. We’re dealing with a moving target when we’re dealing with digital inclusion, as I say, the tech is not standing still. AI is not the future, but the present. It’s already deeply embedded in the digital tools and services that we’re using every day. And I know one of the sessions just this afternoon was looking at AI in everyday applications.
Prof Julian Thomas
So as users, as consumers and citizens, we all need to know far more about it than we do. Here again, the stakes are constantly being raised. Generative AI is developing quickly from tools which create things to answer questions on ChatGBT or create an image or a chart if we want it. It’s moving on from that, just as we’re trying to catch up with it. It’s moving on from creating things to doing things for us, acting as an agent or an assistant, but we can’t demand the safe, responsible and trustworthy AI that we need, without being confident in our own capabilities to make the best use of it.
Prof Julian Thomas
So not that I’m not trying to suggest that solving digital inclusion means solving everything, but it does mean that if we can respond to that challenge, we are in a position to create new opportunities for ourselves, and at the very least, prevent people from falling further behind.
Prof Julian Thomas
Now, as Mary said, we’ve been studying digital inclusion for some time now. We recognise that, especially in the regions, access to quality, reliable and affordable internet is crucial, and so are skills, the ability to use tech to do what you need to do and what you want to do. But we think that focusing just on technology, and even just on skills as well, can also lead us to overlook some significant aspects of this that I want to highlight tonight.
Prof Julian Thomas
It’s from our perspective, from what we’ve learned about this, it’s much more about people and about getting people together — which is what this program is doing. So it’s about community when people are digitally included. We believe that households benefit, organisations benefit, and communities benefit when communities are digitally included, the results are significant.
Prof Julian Thomas
Local businesses and leaders gain confidence they can use technology to pursue their goals. As part of our collaboration with the Victorian Women’s Trust on the Rural Women Online program, members of our research team have joined with the initial community consultations that were held with local leaders, business people and community representatives about this program. What they shared helped form the basis of what’s been going on this week. We heard a lot about the challenges and the barriers to digital inclusion, but it wasn’t all negative, far from it.
Prof Julian Thomas
So among the things we heard was that there was a wait list for a women’s mentorship program to start and grow their businesses. Demand was high, and participation grew through word of mouth. Women were connecting across cultures and ages, sharing skills and building networks. We heard that during the floods here, social networks on Facebook and WhatsApp were essential for keeping everybody informed with photos and updates. Public WiFi was also a critical lifeline during that time of crisis.
Prof Julian Thomas
We heard from a local service provider who recognised that online job applications can be a barrier to those who are experiencing digital exclusion. And then, there were other ways of reaching out and contacting people who might be interested in a position. We heard that public libraries continue to be havens for those seeking help with online services. As more and more essential services move online, we were talking about this this evening, about how public libraries can work as a neutral space for people. So those positive elements involve technology, but they were made possible by the rich connections that exist within this community.
Prof Julian Thomas
So it’s those two elements, the technology and the community, which we see as crucial to digital inclusion. Back in the 1990s and 2000s the key in all the debates around this issue was access. Were you connected to the internet? Could you get a connection to the Internet? If you couldn’t get a connection, you were on the wrong side of what we were then beginning to call ‘the digital divide’. But we know that connection is not enough, even in rural and regional Australia, where it is such a huge issue, there are other things that are necessary.
Prof Julian Thomas
Skills are critical, and the cost of being online is also a significant barrier, not just the cost of data, but also the cost of the devices that are required to use it. As I mentioned earlier, the proliferation of digital tools that we are now finding are out there in order to do the range of different tasks that we are expected to be doing.
Prof Julian Thomas
So while most people in Australia now have home internet, as opposed to the situation that existed 20 years ago, the quality of that connection still varies very widely, and so does what people can do online device availability and usage differ. There are growing gaps, in fact, between non users and low users and frequent users, and those users we sometimes call ‘proxy users’, who use the internet and online services through another person, say, a member of their household, who does things for them.
Prof Julian Thomas
Teaching, tracking digital inclusion is crucial. Participation in today’s digital world requires resources, skills and knowledge, and it also demands time and opportunity. I’ll say just a little bit about that, but the knowledge base about where we are with all of this is important. Mary mentioned the Digital Inclusion Index, the tool that we have developed to help measure digital inclusion across Australia and over time, that helps us understand the scale of the problem. It measures access, it measures affordability, it measures digital skills across the country, and it provides some a range of multiple ways to get at this question of what is driving digital inclusion in different places.
Prof Julian Thomas
So let’s look at the situation in regional Victoria, specifically Greater Shepparton. What we find here is that the digital inclusion score, as in the rest of the country, has been rising over the past few years, but despite that improvement, it’s still lower than the overall score for Australia. People in Shepparton are using technology more frequently, and on a greater range of devices than ever before, just like the rest of the country, but the scores remain lower than the Victorian average. None of that, however, is inevitable.
Prof Julian Thomas
If we look at our findings specifically for regional Victoria, we find, and this is really interesting, we find that women in particular, have higher scores than men. In regional Victoria, women are increasingly accessing technology more frequently on a greater range of devices for a wider range of purposes than men.
Prof Julian Thomas
So programs like Rural Women Online are not starting from scratch. They’re building on that level of interest and capability and taking advantage of the opportunities of technology. So what’s behind those numbers? I did want to say a little bit about some work that a colleague of ours, who was here earlier this week, Jenny Kennedy, has done on low income families in Shepparton and their experiences online.
Prof Julian Thomas
Now, Jenny looked at the impact of what was called the Connected Students Program, a program that tackled affordability barriers to digital inclusion here with Telstra support, connected students provided kits to low income households with students who are between the ages of 15 and 18. So at that point in High School, where you really need to be able to use tech in order to get through, kits included laptop, a router and unlimited broadband for two years.
Prof Julian Thomas
And so Jenny’s research sought to understand what impact that had, what difference did that make on people’s lives, not just for the students themselves, but also, of course, for the households they were in. She found that the money that would have been spent, that would have gone to laptops or connections, was redirected in those households to other necessities. Parents didn’t have to choose between buying a device or extending connectivity. It reduced family conflict over devices and eased pressure on schedules. Families didn’t need to travel for free WiFi or for access to devices.
Prof Julian Thomas
So one participant said — I’m quoting — she said, “it’s made it a lot easier. The tension over phones, the arguments over data usage the same in every house. It’s just stopped one level of stress, which has been really good.”
Prof Julian Thomas
And in that quotation, I think you see a key message that digital inclusion takes place, is fostered, is developed within households, within families, within domestic settings. We can also see, given Telstra involvement in that program, that business has a role too. It’s not just about households, but this is what happens in the home.
Prof Julian Thomas
Digital inclusion initiatives benefit the individual, they also benefit the broader household, and that then impacts how household members are participating in or influencing the broader community. So trying to pull these, some of these thoughts and observations together, the digital ecosystem we’re living in is vast and varied.
Prof Julian Thomas
Communities have different needs. Digital inclusion looks different in every context. What we demand of tech and what tech demands of us also changes over time. So what it means to be digitally included in Shepparton now, might not be the same as in Wodonga in Ballarat or Echuca. Each community has unique challenges and opportunities. Understanding these local contexts is essential to addressing digital inequalities effectively.
Prof Julian Thomas
Now, when we think of digital inclusion, it’s always tempting to go back to the idea that tech is the key issue, but the focus on technology always risks us overlooking the importance of community. Technology alone does not create an inclusive society. So what can we learn from the Rural Women Online program, from the inspiring work of the Victorian Women’s Trust in making this happen, some of the lessons that struck me thinking about what we’ve been doing here this week, and all the work that went into making it happen, some of those lessons might might seem a little bit paradoxical, a little bit counter intuitive, but I’m going to try them out on you, and we think that they can help us in responding to this challenge and all the other challenges and opportunities that arise out of it.
Prof Julian Thomas
So first of all, the significance of the problem, we need to recognise that as the digital divide, as we become used to calling it as the digital divide, is narrowing as devices and tech get better and cheaper, and more of us are connected. As I said at the beginning, more of us connected, doing more things on more and more stuff. The paradox of that is that the gap that remains matters more, not less. That’s because the costs of exclusion grow as the number of excluded people diminish.
Prof Julian Thomas
If you think back, you know that 2025, the year I mentioned back to when we started thinking about the digital divide. At that time, if you didn’t have an email address, it wasn’t, it was, well, probably an inconvenience. It was probably something that might have made some connections more difficult with some people or organisations, but it was really an inconvenience.
Prof Julian Thomas
Now, if you’re not connected now, the costs are much, much higher, because what is going to happen is that you are going to miss out on critical services. So the stakes have been raised.
Prof Julian Thomas
And of course, so when we talk about those, the other thing to remember here is that if we talk about one or two people out of 10, that sounds like a small number, but at the level of a population, it’s not a small number. So those costs are being incurred by, in fact, a large number of people at the level of population. A comparatively small number of people is a large group. Those two excluded people out of the group of 10 represent over 4 million people in the adult Australian population. So that’s the number of people who are materially excluded.
Prof Julian Thomas
Second point about this, about the role of community agency, we need to understand that despite the critical challenges around infrastructure and access in northeastern Victoria and elsewhere, especially right across in rural Australia, generally, digital inclusion is not as I said, it’s not just about technology or engineering, and it’s not about skills. Both are critically important.
Prof Julian Thomas
So the major investments that have been made in communications over recent decades are a good example, from the NBN to mobile networks and more recently, Starlink and other low Earth orbiting satellites, all of those things have delivered significant improvements for people in regional Australia. There is no question about that, but they are not enough to solve the problem on its own. These are necessary for digital inclusion, but they are not sufficient.
Prof Julian Thomas
What’s missing, what is critical is community communication and human agency. Now the third key lesson, I think, from Rural Women Online is the focus on place, the first one doing this work here.
Prof Julian Thomas
And the way I think about that is to say that we need to remember that the internet is always local. We usually talk about the online world as if, as if it’s global or placeless, that it’s some sort of cyberspace which doesn’t exist anywhere, but it is actually always grounded in where we are, in the technical and social and cultural infrastructures that are available to us, in the places we live in, the places we work in, the places we meet, such as this or libraries or others and the places we talk to each other. So the internet is always local.
Prof Julian Thomas
And the last kind of key point, which struck me as important relates to work, and which is really what has been going on here all week, serious work. So this is about the understanding that technology creates work and consumes time.
Prof Julian Thomas
That might sound silly and obvious to you, but in the field of technology studies, we sometimes talk about the ironies of automation and the key here is the observation that when new labour saving systems, such as such as digital service apps, those kinds of things are introduced. This is often in the name of saving labour, of being more efficient at those kinds of things, but they often have the effect of creating additional work in some other place, shifting costs, rather than getting rid of them completely. So this is often the case with tech. Rather the onus is placed on the user to learn how to make it work.
Prof Julian Thomas
We often manage this in families with one person sometimes taking on the role of being the tech savvy person. Of course that can create its own difficulties, can create, in fact, new sources of stress, sometimes especially for those who are vulnerable or in difficulty.
Prof Julian Thomas
For example, when you lose, for whatever reason, that tech savvy person in the household, a child who moves away, or a partner who dies, any of those things can happen and that can produce an overwhelming degree of anxiety and difficulty, and a real challenge in relation to just the work involved for the person who is left with that task. So tackling that task in isolation can be debilitating and discouraging.
Prof Julian Thomas
I think the genius of the Rural Women Online program is recognising we can share the labour of learning, and that we often learn best from each other and in company. So I’ll finish there. I think these are just a few of the lessons that we can draw from Rural Women Online. And I think these are also just a few of the reasons why the program and the extraordinary work of the Trust will be so important for the women of Shepparton, for rural women, and their communities everywhere. Thank you. [Applause.]
Linda Nieuwenhuizen
Bright spotlights. So hello, and my name is Linda Nieuwenhuizen, and I am the CEO of the Committee for Greater Shepparton, and it is my great privilege to offer the Vote of Thanks to Professor Julian Thomas for his — he promised me it would be a wide ranging stroll, and then handed me a cheat sheet, and then he’s meandered even further. So the cheat sheet was a much narrower explanation of what the territory that you’ve managed to cover today.
Linda Nieuwenhuizen
So very quickly, before I begin, I would like to acknowledge the Traditional owners of the land on which we meet tonight, and pay my respects to their Elders, past, present and emerging.
Linda Nieuwenhuizen
And I think that is a key component of what we are exploring here in Shepparton, is the role of technology that has this capacity to connect across time and across communities and across languages and even across a river that divides our city. And when you look at the points you were making tonight about the incredible impact that digital exclusion can have on people, we don’t need to cast our minds far to understand what that means.
Linda Nieuwenhuizen
We can go back barely 18 months to the floods and never was there such an impact that was so immediate and struck all levels of the community and demonstrated to us that when emergency services are entirely dependent on digital delivery, or our energy connections are limited to one side of the river and you can’t charge your phone, or that our entire workforce is spread across a region, and once it’s unable to travel, the inability to receive and confirm information, well, where is it safe to travel in order to get to work? How big is the detour that I will need to take? Do I genuinely trust Google Maps at this point in time?
Linda Nieuwenhuizen
We begin to understand that digital exclusion is not just identified by a socio economic standard or the other factors we touched on. It’s often, often brought out at a point in time through incidents and events that impact on all of us. And I think it’s a very valuable point in time to reflect on because that’s what helps us understand and relate to the challenges that others will go through every day of the week who are unable to participate in the systems and processes that we expect will happen.
Linda Nieuwenhuizen
The other thing I really kept coming back to was the concern I have about the exclusion is actually robbing us of the richness of community engagement and conversation. And when you live in a city like Shepparton, we have 40+ faiths represented in the city. We have 106 of the 160 nations around Australia living in our city. And we have this rich history of migration and wave after wave of arrivals.
Linda Nieuwenhuizen
That means we’re the home of Australia, of Victoria’s first mosque and Australia’s youngest ever Socceroo, and we can only lay claim to that because of our diverse community that is able to work together. And so this idea that somehow digital communication and connection can bring us closer together is wonderful.
Linda Nieuwenhuizen
But it excludes. We become an echo chamber of those we speak with, and there was a brilliant line from someone who said, “You will never know less by talking to your enemies. You’ll never necessarily know more by talking to the same”. And I think that the real challenge we have in how we make use of technology is to not use it to exclude others, but to also to not purposely exclude ourselves from being challenged or being considered in how we explore the information that’s out there ahead of us.
Linda Nieuwenhuizen
I think we only have to look at the events in the US to understand how destructive a binary conversation can be to the exploration of possibilities and new ways of thinking. The other point I really kept coming back to me as well, was actually from another presenter, but you nailed it in your explanations, and he was saying the other day that the pace of change has never been so fast and it will never be so slow again.
Linda Nieuwenhuizen
So we’re not talking about — I think this week has provided a platform for us to explore so much of what is available and possible now, and also the challenges and threats that might be in front of us. But we’re not embarking on a single point in time education process, and then you set for life. What we’re embarking on is a journey of learning to be confident in the use of technology.
Linda Nieuwenhuizen
And you did raise the three points of — I’m just going to check my notes here that I got it right. You spoke about access, skills and cost, and I would add to that confidence. I can’t recall the number of times I’ve said to staff working on my websites or socials or whatever, trust me, it’s only the Kardashians that can break the internet, we’re okay and learning to make mistakes and have those conversations, I think, is really important.
Linda Nieuwenhuizen
But equally, having the respect for the agencies that are trying to use these vehicles, to reach out to more of us and engage us in more ways than has been possible. You know, one small typo on a post doesn’t change its sentiment, and yet it can create such a wave of comments about lack of diligence or failure to do something, and again, we’re missing what the vehicle is meant to be there for is about engaging us, and it actually feeds that converse, that that fear of participation, and yet again, robs us of the richness of conversations that are possible.
Linda Nieuwenhuizen
And then finally, in terms of running to stand still, I am exhausted. I think the technology that’s out in front of us is, well, personally, I think it’s just so exciting. I think the analogy I have is, you know, when my dad fled, not my granddad fled Norway, he came to Australia. He never had contact with his family by voice for 30 years until he returned.
Linda Nieuwenhuizen
We can change all of that. We are connected immediately. We have the capacity and the skills to actually do that safely and continuously, and that brings us closer to wherever we’ve come from and from whatever we want to do. And that is the real, I guess, the nuggets of joy that you bring out of these opportunities, the learning about how to do it safely, and going back to that confidence point, the skills and the access and how we build it in. You know that is a part of the conversations we’re having today about how we build housing.
Linda Nieuwenhuizen
You know, we have talked about how good it is to see NBN here today. We have talked about, you know, why isn’t technology? And I guess that NBN connects digital connectivity as a feature of how we build housing, as you know, putting in the electricity and the lifts, it’s just there, and it’s not something that people have to choose whether they buy into their property.
Linda Nieuwenhuizen
So having touched on the the echo chamber and the fears that it can bring, I think, at no point in my experience in the workforce and going beyond that, have I felt such an opportunity to participate in conversations that are happening anywhere and everywhere and all at once, from the local catch ups and the immediate community connectivity that we saw mobilised in response to our floods to the, you know, however many submissions I’ve been writing of late with regard to energy transition and freight planning, and what do we want Victoria to grow to become?
And I think these are all great examples of where, if we can get it right, and if we can get the skills right, and why this week has been so important about lifting public discourse and public engagement to something that’s meaningful and ongoing and not just a point in time.
Linda Nieuwenhuizen
So thank you for getting us thinking, also to Mary and the team who have made this week happen, from the delightful mocktails to the really fascinating events and opportunities you’ve created across the week. It has been a huge undertaking, I mean, no doubt about that, and also a really fascinating insight into the different components and different aspects of digital digital literacy, digital inclusion, but more importantly, collaboration and partnerships that we can build locally. So once again, thank you for your time. Thank you to everyone who made this week happen, and thank you for the delightful strawberry cocktail. Thanks.
Alana Johnson
Feels precarious walking up there. Hello there. For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Alana Johnson, the chair of the Victorian Women’s Trust, and I’ve been over here this week. I’ve come over from where I live, south of Benalla in Taungurung Country, and I think a fitting start for me is, firstly, in her absence, to acknowledge and pay respect to our wonderful, long time Board Director, well known local in Shepparton and proud Yorta Yorta woman, Leanne Miller.
Alana Johnson
So we’ve learned a lot from Leanne and have had this wonderful partnership that’s been happening for over 30 years. So that’s fantastic.
Alana Johnson
So I think I should start. I’ve been here for a few days this week. It’s just been a joyful experience. So with appreciation to the men who are in the room, just push you to the side for a minute to park you, because there is something that really special happens when you get a whole lot of women together who are there to collaborate and help one another. There’s a special sort of energy, and I think probably all of us are aware that we’ll go away feeling a greater sense of energy and enthusiasm and optimism, because that’s what happens, it generates that.
Alana Johnson
So I’ve had this lovely week working with all these wonderful women who have come through the door and and participated in the program. So it’s my job to thank a large number of people. Firstly, Julian, thank you for that very thought provoking presentation.
Alana Johnson
I met Julian, you know, back three years ago now, and his wisdom about this whole issue has really been a huge support and has informed the development of the rural women online program. So thank you, Julian, and to Linda. Thank you for your words.
Alana Johnson
Coming to Shepparton from Benalla, so Shepparton being a much bigger city, I am always struck when I come here about the vibrancy of this city. There is the diversity of it, the caring community that you have created, which really showed in the last terrible floods, double floods that you had Shepparton’s a very special place in Victoria, sort of been a hidden gem, and it’s always a joy to come over here. I think it’s a fantastic example of what a vibrant rural community can be.
Alana Johnson
So the RMIT, RMIT team have been with us this week. I think Kieran is still with us, and Stephanie is here too. Yes, there she is, so we’ve we’re missing Jenny, who’s been with us, and Robin, but it’s just been wonderful to have you here, and like the the work with you, the support that you give us with the evaluation, the beautiful video photography that’s happened with Natalie this afternoon. I mean, it’s just been such a lovely partnership, and we really value this time that we’ve had through these three years, worked with you, and we’re looking forward to having you work with this in Yackandandah.
Alana Johnson
NBN Charlene Donovan, and we must say, great appreciation to you for not only supporting this program, but we’ll see you in Yackandandah, because you’re supporting that as well, and we’ve also had a range of wonderful stand holders who’ve been out in the foyer every day, presenting information, chatting to people, telling people about what they can offer.
Alana Johnson
One of the most part of this has been the collection of these amazing young women who have been the Drop In staff. We’ve had Meg and Zara and Cynthia and Fatima and Mandy, and they’ve just been out there. So welcoming, so patient, so delighted to work with all of the women who’ve turned up to the point that Fatima, on Monday, had left her one year old baby for the first time with her sister, and she turned up on Tuesday, and she turned up on Wednesday. She’s turned up today because she has just had the most marvellous time, and she wants to thank everybody for including her in this and then wandering around
Alana Johnson
And I’m sure he’s here somewhere is Rob over there. Talk about doing, you know, technical magic. All of this wouldn’t have happened without Rob. So thank you.
Alana Johnson
I also want to thank Chris Nunn from Wisewell Women, who was wonderful to create an opportunity for women whose first language isn’t English, to have facilitated translation and to really help that part of narrowing that division, digital divide.
Alana Johnson
My favourite part of the whole event has to be the little lounge room that we created. I’ve gone and sat there a number of times, isn’t that beautiful? I mean, that’s, that’s, that’s such a women’s way of setting up a conference or a venue. So to go with that has to be a thank you to Bill and Betts from Mooroopna now for the beautiful soup and lunch we had every day. So I enjoyed sitting there.
Alana Johnson
And of course, then I need to turn to the Rural Women Online team, and what a team they are. So Jess, where are you like? She has this young woman here who has carried this whole thing pretty much on her shoulders. She has just been one, and most of you would have seen her just flitting around the whole time keeping track of everything. I don’t know how or where the skills and the know how to come comes from to do it at your age, but you blow me away.
Alana Johnson
Then we’ve had Bim Rutherford from Shepparton and Leanne Mulcahy from Yackandandah. Or she actually isn’t from Yackandandah, you’re from Beechworth, Leanne? That’s right, but you’re going to be working at the Yackandandah. And so they’ve been doing all of community connecting, and a lot of people you would you would have known them, because they’ve just been everywhere, and been the amount of work that you’ve done in creating the not the the the knowledge across the whole community about this event has been amazing.
Alana Johnson
We have to welcome Ally Oliver-Perham, who comes from Castlemaine, but works with the Victorian Women’s Trust, and who’s made a special trip to be here with us.
Alana Johnson
And we’re also got, and I think left now, but we’ve had George Egan, who’s the tech man from Bendigo who also works with the Victorian Women’s Trust, so he’s come all this way to lend his expertise.
Alana Johnson
And then we have a couple of people who are missing, who haven’t been able to be with us today. And that’s Rachael and Bron, so our thoughts go to them too.
Alana Johnson
We have to give special acknowledgement to the fact that this program would never have been able to happen in the way it has if it wasn’t for our project funders, which are the Helen McPherson Smith trust and the Bendigo Bank Community Foundation, they have been significant contributors to this. And the reason we’ve been able to do part two, phase two of the Rural Women Online project coming to Shepparton for a whole week is due to their support.
Alana Johnson
And of course, the city of Shepparton, this venue has just been so beautiful, hasn’t it, and the events team who work for the city of Shepparton have just been as have Telstra in setting all of this up. So what a week we’ve had, and we’ve got a little glimpse again tomorrow. So some more to attend.
Alana Johnson
And then anyone who’s interested can come to Yackandandah. We have someone from Yackandandah who’s come here. So we’re opening doors in Yackandandah for anyone in Shepparton who feels like, oh, I want more of that. Or I want to take my friends to that, come over to Yackandandah. So that’s on the 10th to the 14th of September.
Alana Johnson
Finally, I want to thank Nicky Friedman, the Vice Chair of the deputy chair of the Victorian Women’s Trust, who’s been with us also for a long time, and come up to join us. So thank you, Nicky, your presence is appreciated.
Alana Johnson
And then how do you thank Mary Crooks? She is the brains. She is the energy. She is the money finder. She has stick ability. She is the thing that the whole thing runs on.
Alana Johnson
So Mary, you know you have incredible admiration, not only from your Board and your staff, but I think many, many women around the whole of Victoria. So I want to just take this time to especially thank you, and in terms of what you’ve left us with.
Alana Johnson
Julian, I think a really important point that I will take with me, that notion that understanding your local context has to be a pivotal thing, a foundational thing that we need to do. We’ve got to understand every community, our own communities, and how they work in order to make progress on the digital divide. And so I think it’s incumbent on all of us now to be part of addressing that in our own communities, and being involved when women help women, a lot of great things can happen, as we know.
Alana Johnson
So it’s a call out now for all of the women of Shepparton, who who have participated in this program, to be able to now stretch out your hand and offer assistance and support and information to other women, knowing that your wonderful library is open here to for people to actually go and learn some of the things that we’ve all learned this week.
Alana Johnson
So, being active, community members, is one of the magic ingredients in reducing this digital divide, and I’m ready to go home and practice, AI, for the first time! Thank you.
This keynotes were presented as part of Rural Women Online. We thank NBN for their support of each keynote event. Rural Women Online was made possible thanks to support from our major partners, Helen MacPherson Smith Trust, and Bendigo Bank Community Enterprise Foundation.
