How to create real change

Commical – Episode title: How to create real change

Published 05/09/2022 on Chasing Albert website, spotify and apple podcasts.

Marie 00:00

I can't remember the last time I fought for something I believed in, not counting, of course, Twitter tirades or re-sharing Insta posts about Palestine with a crying emoji and a 'this has to stop' hashtag. My fight for peace is a daily grind. On a tiny level, I fight for peace when my two daughters go to war. I demand peace and quiet when I'm on the toilet, but my kids are still talking to me about Pokemon. I pray for calm when I'm shopping for clothes and an assistant insists I need to go up a size. That's about all I have the time and energy for. Thank God there are people who care about bigger things and are willing to invest their time and energy to bring about real change on important issues for the rest of us. Today on Commical, we'll talk to Dany Elachi from the Heads Up Alliance. Together with a group of passionate parents, he's in the middle of a fight for children's right to learn without distraction. Australia's leading government relations expert, Alistair Nicholas, also joins us to talk about how to drive real change. Welcome, Dany, and welcome, Alistair.

Guest 01:15

Hi, Marie. Thank you for having me back on the show. I'm well, thank you.

Marie 01:19

That's good. You both look great. Alistair, I can see you have invested in some kind of ring light, or there's some beautiful natural light shining down on you.

Guest 01:33

Well, it follows me everywhere.

Marie 01:37

You know, Alistair, you were the first person I ever had on Commical. Is that right? Did you know that?

Guest 01:46

I was going to say, and you still have an audience.

Marie 01:49

People still download it. Thank you so much for joining us. I'm actually really excited to have a chat with you both about making change. Dany, the Heads Up Alliance - great name, by the way.

Guest 02:04

Thanks, and credit for it - it was one of the other parents who thought of it. We thought it was really good for what we're doing, so we ran with it.

Marie 02:11

Yeah, it's really great, and it reminds me of being in the car when my kids always say - because they're not allowed to use phones or iPads when we're in the car - if I give them my phone to control the music, they stare at the lyrics in Spotify, right? So I say to them, 'Guys, heads up. Look out the window.' 'But there's nothing to see.' I'm like, 'There's trees. There's the world. Look up, please.' So I really love the name, and I love what you guys stand for. Why don't you tell us a little bit about the Heads Up Alliance and what it is you guys have been trying to do?

Guest 02:44

All right. The Heads Up Alliance started when my eldest daughter was in Year 5. That was about three years ago now, and she reached an age where her mum and I knew this time was going to come, when she was going to insist that she needed a mobile phone. And of course, the usual spiel is that everybody else has one. Why am I the only one who can't have one? So with a bit of a heavy heart, we ended up giving her an old iPhone, thinking, oh, this might not be the best thing, but she really persisted and we relented. Within a couple of months, we saw that it was just swallowing up all her time. Fortuitously, the phone died, and then we thought to ourselves, well, I don't know that we're going to give her another one. This is just taking her away from family time. She used to sneak it into bed, and we'd catch her at midnight messaging friends and things like that. Texting is so 10 years ago, isn't it? So we just didn't replace it. Obviously, there was a lot of pushback from her because she'd gotten used to it by then - I would say almost addicted. She would cry herself to sleep for many months. She really would. That wasn't an easy thing to see as a parent, but the alternative was, in our minds, she either cries for a few days now or potentially cries for a lifetime later. We chose the crying for a few days. Eventually, of course, she got over it. She obviously still wasn't happy. So the idea came to us that what we need to do, so that she doesn't feel like she's the only one who's without a phone, is reach out to other kids in her class, her grade or her school who also don't have phones and don't have TikTok and social media and Instagram. That's how it all started. We reached out to other parents. We said, 'Look, are we the only ones who are concerned about this technology and who've decided that we're not going to just give it to our kids? If there's someone else out there, can you please reach out to us so that we can form a bit of an alliance?' So our children can see that they're not the only ones, and we parents can feel a little bit supported in knowing that we're not the only mean parents in the school. That's pretty much how it all started.

Marie 05:05

But since then it's grown, and one of the things that you're currently lobbying for is for schools to ban the use of mobile phones just within school hours. Is that right?

Guest 05:16

Yeah, that's right. We found that the message we're trying to sell is a very hard one - going to other parents and trying to sell the idea that their kids don't need social media and don't need smartphones up until a certain age. We've drawn a line at Year 8. We've said, if you want to join our group, you've got to commit to other parents in the group, as we are committing to you, not to give your kids social media and smartphones until the end of Year 8. So that's the minimum requirement. And for most parents, the vast majority, that's just not something they're interested in.

Marie 05:52

Unfortunately. Well, I've told my kids they can't have social media till they're 30.

Guest 06:01

Well, you're doing well. Earlier this year there was a huge petition put out by a group called North Shore Mums about the idea that kids shouldn't have phones in schools. For us, who don't give our kids phones at all, that was a no-brainer for us to jump on board that train. It's really picked up in the last couple of months. We've been lobbying for high schools in New South Wales not to permit mobile phones during class or during recess and lunch. Other states have already moved in that direction. Victoria, Western Australia and Tasmania moved that way a couple of years ago and haven't looked back. We just think New South Wales should do the same. They did look at the question pre-pandemic and decided we're not going to allow phones in primary schools in New South Wales, but we will leave it up to the individual principals in high schools. We think it should just be a blanket rule for all schools in New South Wales.

Marie 07:06

Alistair, it sounds to me like a no-brainer to just ask kids to turn off or lock up their phone from the moment they walk through the school gate to the moment they walk out. I mean, if for nothing else - let's put the kids aside - if for nothing else, so that teachers are shown some respect and can do their job without constantly saying, 'Put your phone away,' right? But to me that sounds like a no-brainer. Let's assume it is. Why is it so hard to get such a simple policy put in place?

Guest 07:40

I think there are probably a few reasons. As part of this, I did a little bit of research on the topic because I haven't actually worked on this, although I have been a parent - and I still am a parent. My kids are all adults now.

Marie 07:55

So I was going to say, did you give them away? Were they that bad?

Guest 07:59

Sold them. But we went through the same thing as Dany is going through now. Obviously this was 10 or 15 years ago when texting was the big issue, and we were the mean parents. We wouldn't give them mobile phones while they were under that Year 8 range. We had one computer in the house that the kids were allowed to each use for one hour for homework if they needed to do some research. It was in the living room, and Mum or Dad could walk in at any time and see what was on that screen. So we were pretty strict. We lived in China at the time, which was also an interesting place to be while that technology was coming in, because you had all these rich Chinese kids at school who all had the latest gadget, the latest piece of technology, and in the international schools all the kids were spoiled because their parents just wanted them out of their hair because they were too busy living the expat lifestyle. We were imposing this stuff on our kids, who had come home in tears. Well, Johnny or Jane has a mobile phone, and they have all this access, and we don't, and we're missing out, and all the rest of that.

Marie 09:16

Did you make them fax their grandparents at Christmas time? You're like, 'We will go back to old-school values, and you must fax your grandparents now.'

Guest 09:27

We had a carrier pigeon, Marie - cheaper. So I can relate to that. I think to us it's a no-brainer, but here's where the issue starts to arise. I always say to a lot of my clients that on any particular issue there are probably going to be four different points of view on it. You're not the only one who's going to be trying to lobby the government for something, and I think that's also the case with something like this. Maybe to the three of us this is a no-brainer. We've dealt with it, we've been at the coalface of the problems you can have with kids and social media. But there may be people who haven't really been there, haven't faced it, or haven't had quite the same experience - maybe even parents who haven't had the same experience. Little Johnny's very responsible with his social media account at the age of 10 - I don't know, maybe.

Marie 10:25

Yeah, but for something that is not about a blanket ban - it's not about do not give your kids phones, it's not about social media - it's just, quite literally, lock up your phone just during school hours, right? So what could possibly be the pushback? Dany, you've had some reasons why people say no. One guy on Twitter that I had a bit of a to-and-fro with after a story on A Current Affair on this topic was like, 'Well, so that they can capture evidence of abuse on the playground.' And my view was, 'Let's give them guns then.'

Guest 11:01

Sounds like my school.

Marie 11:08

No, but I was like, where are these schools - in the ghettos? Why do they need to capture evidence? What's going on? But sir, that was one reason. What are some of the reasons that people say kids should have phones, or at the very least, what are some of the reasons that the Education Department says, no, let's leave it up to the principal to decide? Why would kids need phones?

Guest 11:31

Can I say from the outset that the vast majority of parents are actually in agreement on this point? As I was saying earlier, selling the Heads Up Alliance product - don't give your kids mobile phones and don't give them social media at all until the end of Year 8 - is a very hard message for most people. Interestingly, though, when it comes to this issue about locking phones up during school hours, every survey I've seen has parents in agreement, upwards of 80%, somewhere between 80% and 90%. I've heard of schools, for example Davidson High School, that brought it in and made all the news in the last couple of months. When they surveyed their parents, I think the feedback was something along the lines of 83% of parents were in agreement. When I've seen polls being done online through some news outlets, all the polls come back in that 80% to 90% range. Now, I know that's not a scientific study or anything like that, but it gives you some indication of where the level of support is in terms of parents. Where the pushback is, interestingly, isn't the parents - it is some experts who are obviously advising government. The reasons they give as to why it's so important that we don't have these bans - and we prefer to call them restrictions, actually, and I just want to clarify this point. A lot of people say, 'Well, if you ban phones then my son who's got diabetes won't be able to manage his glucose readings.' So that's not what we mean. When we talk about bans, we don't mean an absolute. There are obviously exceptions. If your child needs a phone to manage health conditions, then of course that's okay. And if a teacher in a particular lesson says, 'I need these mobile phones for a coding class,' then of course that's okay. But we're talking about the other 99% of the time. We prefer to use the word restriction. The pushback we get is, well, kids need to... we live in a world that is saturated in technology, and if we don't allow them the opportunity to regulate their smartphone use, how are we setting them up for the real world when they leave school? I find that quite a pathetic argument, and I'll tell you why in a minute if you want to know. The second argument we usually get is, well, if we don't give them these technologies, they won't know how to use them. Second pathetic argument. They're the two main ones: that we're denying them the opportunity to learn how to use the technology, and we're denying them the opportunity to learn how to regulate their technology.

Marie 14:19

I don't want to go too deep, because there's still a lot I want to cover, but I do see the validity in the argument that they do need to learn to regulate and use technology in a safe way. That's a view I hold. The view for me, though, is that's okay - they can learn that outside of school hours.

Guest 14:36

Could I just come back to that? I think what Dany's talking about is quite important, but this comes back to the point I'm making - that on an issue like this you are going to have a range of views, and there are experts, and the experts have the ear of the people in the government departments. They have the ear of politicians. Let's be honest, politicians are not experts in everything. The minister for education is not an expert in this particular area. So when she's got a group of psychologists, or a group that has a psychologist, coming in to say, 'Minister, here's why we think kids need to have mobile phones and this sort of access,' the minister will listen to them. My point is that you need to have your own experts. I've had a look at your Facebook page, Dany, for the Heads Up Alliance, and I think you've done a good job of doing what I normally tell clients we need to do - build a coalition of the willing, find the like-minded people, the fellow road travellers, pull them together, and then start to use that to lobby government. But I think there's a little bit more that needs to be done beyond that. You've done a good job of pulling them together. I don't know what else you have done. I saw on the page this morning that you had written to the minister and you've written to the department, and the department gave you a typical departmental type answer, which is, 'We will review this in due course,' or words to that effect. So the question then is, how do you get them to do it a little bit faster? How do you bring due course to now?

Guest 16:13

Yeah, so you mentioned something a little earlier, Alistair, which is that we as parents are at the coalface, and I do sometimes think there is a bit of a disconnect between some academics and what's actually happening in reality. It all sounds nice in theory that we need to teach our children A, B, C and so on and so forth, but the reality is these machines, these smartphones, are addiction machines. They're designed to be addictive. So we know as parents and teachers that, for all this wonderful talk of teaching children how they need to manage their smartphone use, in practice it doesn't translate, because these machines are designed to addict them. The parents and the teachers don't have the resources all the time to sit there and manage the students' management of their phones. So what actually ends up happening is that these kids are spending so much time on them in their classroom lessons and in the playground. They're not relating to each other in any way and are completely ignoring each other, busy with these devices in their hands. So yeah, there is this disconnect, as you said, between what we're seeing at the coalface and what some academics in their ivory towers are telling us ought to happen. Well, the ought - there's been 10 years of opportunity to show us how it ought to happen, and it hasn't happened.

Marie 17:36

Firstly, education decisions and policies - that's a state-level decision, right?

Guest 17:45

Yep. Anything below higher education is a state-level decision. Except vocational education, which is also state level.

Marie 17:54

Do the state departments speak and learn from each other? Because I'm really curious to know what it was that made Western Australia, Victoria and Tasmania make this decision and the other states not to.

Guest 18:10

I know at the time, even though it is a state prerogative or a state responsibility, Alistair, a few years ago - I think it was Dan Tehan - he was the federal education minister, and he was really pushing the states to move forward on this.

Marie 18:26

Why? What was it that made it such a priority for him?

Guest 18:29

In his view, the education standards were slipping across the entire country. Even though it was a state issue, I think he was really pressing all the individual education ministers in the individual states to look at restricting phones, and some of them heeded that call and some of them didn't. New South Wales fell on the side of, no, we'd rather give each individual school that flexibility. But you're right, Marie, and this is a point we'd also like to make: why don't we have a look at how it's worked out in Victoria, Western Australia and Tasmania? They haven't looked back. We don't have to look far to know that this actually works. Even in the schools that did do it on an ad hoc basis within New South Wales, none of them have reported anything negative. In fact, they're all doing backflips and trying to spread the word about how wonderfully it has changed the school environment. So the evidence is there.

Marie 19:26

Maybe it's not a priority. I mean, there'd be competing priorities, right?

Guest 19:31

Can I just go back to your question of, well, do these guys talk to each other? I think the answer is yes and no. Sometimes they have a conference on something that they might think is a big issue, and the state departments might get together and share things, or someone will pick up a phone and call their counterpart in Victoria or wherever and say, 'You made this change. Why? What was driving that?' But it doesn't always happen like that. Just to give you an example, I'm working on something for a client of mine at the moment, which is a state issue, and we are dealing with state governments in all of the states and territories at the moment on it. We managed to get the right thinking we wanted in New South Wales, and we've gone into other states and been saying to them, 'Well, this is the way it was done in New South Wales.' We were quite surprised that no one was even aware of it. We ended up sharing the information, and they didn't even say, 'Oh, we'll call our counterpart in New South Wales to find out about that.' They said to us, 'Can you send us what they did and what your input was into that process?' So the positive side of that is that we're now going to end up with a consistent regulatory framework for this sector across the country, whereas previously we were worried we were going to have a very patchy one, with different rules in each state, and we would have to operate in each state differently. That's only come about because we decided to go in proactively and see all the other states to say, here's what New South Wales has done, and we had a big input into what was done here, to then start to drive that change in those states as well. So I think there is a real need. You can't just assume that these guys talk to each other. They know what's going on in the other states. Also, in some states, I have to point out, there's a little bit of state rivalry. Well, we're not going to take lessons from that other state. We do it our way here. You can't really go in and just say, 'Oh, they did it this way in Victoria. We should do that up here.'

Guest 21:38

It's interesting you say that there's that bit of rivalry, because I'm really curious to know what your view is on something that we've done recently, which is...

Marie 21:46

Approach the opposition for free advice. I love it.

Guest 21:51

Bill's in the mail, Dany. We've had a good relationship with the opposition leader, Chris Minns, even before this issue became a hot issue in the last few months. So we've approached Chris Minns recently and said, 'Look, we're not getting anywhere with the state government. Do you want to say something about what your policy might be, given that we're coming up to an election? Do you have a view on this issue?' You talk about rivalries - it doesn't get much sharper than that, of course. I'm curious to know whether you think perhaps that was a misstep on our part. We're still waiting to hear back from Chris, but we're hopeful that he might have some positive things to say, and perhaps leverage that and go back to the current government and say, 'Well, if your rivals are prepared to move on this and you're not, that's a real point of difference here.' I don't know whether that's something you would typically do.

Guest 22:47

Yeah, quite often. What I tend to do when we have to effect change with policy or regulation for a client is first do a stakeholder map: who's who, if you like - who's who in the zoo - and where do they sit? Who's likely to support us, who's likely to be against us, who's neutral, and how do we shift the neutral guys across to our side? Quite often, I think people think, well, if I can get to the minister and I can get to the people in the department, that's it - this is a no-brainer, of course they're going to accept it. They're going to move. Well, it doesn't quite work like that. You've got to try to work out who influences the minister, who's the minister likely to be listening to? For this type of case, you need someone to basically instruct the department, 'We want it to go this way' - someone from the government - so that the department's not just left to its own devices on this. I would be looking at things like: is there a committee for education in the New South Wales parliament? Who's the chair of that committee? Who's the deputy chair? Who else is on the committee? How do I get to them? And it's not just about writing to them. Writing is easy. If you write to the minister, you will either get an answer from the minister's staff - it might be signed by the minister, but the draft was written by one of their staffers - or you might have a response from the department, because the minister's staff might flick it to the department to deal with. What I tell clients is we need to ask for a meeting. We want to come in and sit down with you and talk through this issue. You've really got to push for that meeting, and it might mean you have to find those other people in the parliament who might also say, 'I've received a letter from these guys. I know they want to meet with you. Would you meet with them, Minister?' Really build that support and let the minister know that there are colleagues of his or her in the parliament who also support your sort of view. I would have the parents in your group, the people who support you on your Facebook page, write to their local members. Why only write to the minister? Get the local members realising that, hey, I've got constituents here who are concerned about this. Get the numbers from the surveys of the parents who would like to see this. There's an election coming up. They do not want this to be an election issue.

Marie 25:08

So it sounds like, Dany, you're doing all the right things. You just have to do more of it, which of course then lends itself to, well, how much can a self-funded group of volunteers do? How much time and effort do they need to put in to affect change? I know this has started to really blow up for the Heads Up Alliance. How long does it take, Alistair? You're someone who's been doing this for - I mean, I dare say, what, 100 years?

Guest 25:38

Close to that. You know, I started with Methuselah, so it's been a while.

Marie 25:45

But someone like you is an expert. I know you work with some huge brands and organisations, and you are definitely one of the leading experts in this space. What do you say to organisations like the Heads Up Alliance that are doing this alone?

Guest 26:01

Firstly, I'm going to say I'm going to come on the show more often if you do that kind of promotion for me. But what can I say? It can be a battle at times, but it doesn't have to be. You don't have to be overwhelmed by it. It doesn't have to be a huge amount of resources. Yes, while I have worked with some very big brands and ASX-listed companies, I also work with a lot of small companies, and sometimes it's about building the right alliance - maybe getting some of them to put money in so you can hire the right type of people who can actually do this professionally and full-time.

Marie 26:42

Is there something that organisations have done - started really small and run it on their own, then realised, wow, we've got a lot of work to do here? Where does the funding typically come from if they wanted to get bigger and do more?

Guest 26:56

I think for different types of organisations it's different. I've worked with small companies that have had an issue, and I've said, well, if you've got this issue, I guess other small companies in your sector have this issue. Can we bring them into an association of some type? I've created the association, the companies then put the money into it, which then enables them to engage me, or to engage someone full-time who can drive that. One of the benefits these days of social media - quite ironically, given that we're talking about social media - is the fact that you can do crowdfunding. There are that many parents out there concerned about this, and if you're not getting the traction you need with government, I'm sure there would be a lot of parents who would be prepared to put their hands in their pockets and say, 'Hey, I've got a spare 50 bucks here. I'm going to donate it to you guys to do this.' So I'd look at what you could do on a fundraising basis. Now, you need to then have another layer of governance on top of it to do that. But at the end of the day, is it worth it? You may be in for a long battle. You don't know how long this is going to take.

Marie 28:09

But it's so easy, Alistair. I just feel like, okay, take a side. I know the Heads Up Alliance has a number of policy changes that they're looking for, right? But some I know are going to be a much bigger battle, like not allowing social media until the end of Year 8 or use of technology. I think that's a pushing-shit-uphill kind of thing.

Guest 28:29

We're not asking for a policy change there. That has to be voluntary. We're not asking...

Marie 28:34

Okay, yeah. So the only change you're looking for is just restrict the use of phones during school hours.

Guest 28:40

Yeah. At the moment, that's the only thing we're asking government to look at. There might be other issues down the line that we think government has a place for, but we're certainly not asking government to mandate that parents do not give their children smartphones until the end of Year 8. That has to be a voluntary thing that parents decide on their own. We're only talking about what happens during school hours. That is something that schools can enforce, and we believe should enforce, and parents are in a very big way behind this idea.

Guest 29:15

But that is still, in a sense, a policy change you're asking the government for.

Marie 29:19

That particular one, yeah.

Guest 29:23

And that's where you're going to have experts who are going in and saying, 'Well, no, we don't want to do this because of X, Y and Z.' I think on that A Current Affair program that had run it, they had interviewed one expert who talked about the risk of other problems happening, with kids smuggling phones in or whatever it was. But there are experts out there who have the ear of the government, who are able to say, 'Well, here's why we don't think we should do this.' So you've got to be able to counter them. You've got to find your own experts. I think you've got to go in and have the meetings and sit down and have the discussions.

Guest 29:57

Yes. Well, the other person who was interviewed in that program was Dr Michael Carr-Gregg, and he really is the expert on this issue, because he led the review for the government on this very issue back in 2018. That review was very non-committal about what should happen in secondary schools. He, however, has now come out really forcefully to say it needs to be done. So we're really leveraging his words and his strong view on this issue now to say to the government, 'Well, hey, your guy, your top medical doctor who looked into this issue a few years ago, who gave you the option to take the route that you took, is now actually saying this is an urgent matter. It needs to be looked at urgently.' So he's been wonderful support for us these last few weeks.

Guest 30:53

You may have done this, but one thing I would be looking at doing is getting him to write a new paper to say why he's changed his mind, why this has to happen. What's the data that's backing it up? Really put together that sort of detail, and then be able to provide that to the government - hit the government with it. I would also then be hitting the media with it. Here's a paper. It's not just, 'I've suddenly changed my mind because I've got kids and I'm dealing with this,' but I've got a data-driven research paper here that backs up what I'm saying. I'm doing that at the moment with a client where we've hired an economist to actually put forward an argument for why we need a policy change.

Marie 31:34

Alistair, how long do these things take? I mean, even when they're well-funded, these changes take a very, very long time if they happen at all.

Guest 31:42

Well, it can depend on what the issue is. There are some which might be so esoteric that you've just got experts talking to experts in government departments and to government ministers, and because it's not a big issue, the public's not going to be greatly concerned about it. The politicians aren't going to take a lot of notice or feel a sense of urgency to deal with it. I think this is a different issue. We were talking about, okay, this seems a no-brainer to us - why can't we change policy? Well, policy is there, and there is a real thing such as policy. Wouldn't we all live in a perfect world if policy was always decided on the best of the arguments put forward? But ultimately politics comes into it, and policy is determined by politics as well. If you don't understand the politics and you don't know how to play that game, you can't get your message through. You need to know: what are the vested interests? Who are they? Where are they? How do we then counter them and let the politicians know that, hey, there are some marginal seats that may be at risk here? I would be doing a marginal seat analysis - where are the parents, where are the schools? I would be writing to the members in those marginal seats and also targeting the future candidates. We'll know who the candidates are soon enough. The election is due in March. Write to the candidates. Will you support this? Then be prepared to get out in the shopping centres in those seats with a sign up saying this candidate's not supporting us. If you want your kids to have their mobile phone on during class hours all day, vote for him.

Marie 33:20

Dany, sounds easy to me. Just neglect your five children, give up your day job and go to... I mean, easy. There you go. Problem solved. But I want to also talk a little bit about this idea that, you know, don't know why we'd change - parents just need to educate their children. One of the things, being in marketing and comms myself, I find really interesting is when we get asked to solve a very big problem with communication. If you think about smoking and calls to ban smoking, I mean, who on earth could ever claim that smoking is a good thing and we should continue to allow cigarettes? I know it's huge, right? I know I'm really simplifying it here, but the idea that we can just use education to make people stop - in the same way that we should be using education to stop kids from vaping - why can't we just ban vaping or ban smoking? They're the kind of things that I often wonder about. As much as marketing and communication is strong and used to achieve great things, don't you think sometimes it's just impossible to make change through communication, no matter how good it is?

Guest 34:29

I think sometimes, Marie, the vested interests are very entrenched. Some of those examples that you just gave - when you think about all the harm that smoking does, and the cost that it inflicts on economies and on health departments - you think it is a no-brainer, isn't it? But of course there are vested interests. So what we're learning in the space that we're in is that there clearly are vested interests as well. We're still trying to identify them. Perhaps not everyone is out there to do what is best for children. I think part of our job is working out what those other interests are, and what those interests are trying to push, because it may not be what is best for children. It may not always be that.

Guest 35:16

Exactly. That's what I say. There are going to be vested interests out there, and they are going to be running their own campaigns on what they think is best for them, or maybe they are altruistic but deluded and they actually do believe that mobile phone access during class time is a good thing for kids. I don't know, and I don't want to judge them. But the fact is, if you want to effect change, you have to put in the same effort that they're probably putting in. I often have to say this to companies I deal with who may be small companies and they're going up against one of the biggest players in the market, who ultimately probably just wants to establish a monopoly in the market. But you've got to keep fighting if you want to preserve your own interests and your business.

Marie 36:12

Big, big stuff. I think it's amazing what you've achieved so far, Dany. I really do take my hat off to you and the parents involved in the Heads Up Alliance, because I know it's all happening in your own time with work and families. It's a passion project, but it's a project I think you've taken on on behalf of a lot of parents out there.

Guest 36:39

Thanks, Marie. Obviously we're not the only people pushing for this. There are other groups and other individuals who are also involved, so whatever has been achieved hasn't just been achieved by us. But certainly we've found ourselves in the position to contribute to that push. And yeah, as you say, even though we don't have great resources in terms of material and time, we also just couldn't walk away from the fight. So we're in it, we're doing our best, and we appreciate your words.

Marie 37:15

Good luck with it, Dany. Anyone that's listening that would like to show some support, feel free to jump on Facebook and look up the Heads Up Alliance and stay across what the group is up to. Good luck, Dan. Thanks for coming on. Alistair, thank you for your words and your free advice. Dany, change your address.

Guest 37:51

My pleasure, Marie. Thanks for having me. Thank you.