2019-05-07
By Laurel Di Vietri
I am one of many volunteers who love door knocking and see the correlation between strong Greens votes and areas door knocked.
My favourite part of a door knock is the last half hour, coming together for the debrief with other volunteers after walking the streets for 2 or more hours. I am always pleasantly surprised when the number of meaningful conversations are disclosed by each door knocker. The debrief is a time to laugh about any funny incidents, chalk up your success and, rarely, offload any negative reactions at the door to our friends. For me, the worst sort of door knock is one where hardly anybody is home and few conversations have been had. Worse still are the places where someone is home and they don’t answer the door. Woodlands recently was one of these kinds of doorknocks for Curtin volunteers.
People can be quite predictable at the door. “I’m voting Liberal” is very often followed by “because I’ve always voted Liberal”. It does surprise me though when someone believes climate change is happening but says that there are much more important things to worry about, rating it not very highly on their lists of concerns.
When I door knocked with Perth By-Election Campaign team, they would write up in the office on a whiteboard quotes from walk list notes which volunteers had made. This would change every week. However, there was one quote which remained and wasn’t ever superseded - someone reporting on having heard “sex noises”.
The header photo highlights participants in a recent very successful door knock in Wembley Downs. It’s great to have a mixture of old and young volunteers.
Header photo: Curtin door knockers meeting at Luketina Reserve, Wembley Downs. Left to right, Steven Mansfield, Patricia Armstrong, Gillian Stroud, Benjamin Mayne, Nikola MacLennan, Renata Whittle, Liam Higson, Daniel Grosso, Cameron Pidgeon, Laraine Newton, Heather Lonsdale, Chilla Bulbeck, Laurel de Vietri. Photo taken by Lucy, a student at ECU
[Opinions expressed are those of the author and not official policy of Greens WA]