All of our listening work depends on people trusting us with what they tell us. Here is exactly how we protect that.

Your name never appears

Whether you share an issue online, speak at a Kitchen Table Conversation, or respond to something on this site, your name is never published on the listening pages or in any report. We record only your suburb, age band and gender alongside what you told us. This is called de-identification.

Small groups are never shown

If a group of responses is small enough that somebody could reasonably be identified from it — an unusual combination of suburb, age and gender, for instance — we leave it out of public reporting altogether, rather than showing it and hoping nobody looks too closely.

We sort issues three ways

So that patterns can be found without anybody having to read every single submission, we sort what we hear by broad theme, by which Working Group it belongs to, and by general policy area. None of this changes what was said. It only makes it possible to see what is rising to the top.

We don’t turn what you tell us into policy

That is a deliberate line we hold. Our job is to listen accurately and report faithfully. What is done with it is a matter for candidates and elected representatives — and for you to hold them to.

They can use what we publish to shape their priorities and their positions. That is the nature of the relationship between Voices groups, which are the community side, and Community Independents, who are the political side. Both are committed to better democratic representation, but integrity and transparency require the two to remain completely separate in law and in money. We are not a political party and we do not tell anyone how to vote.

Changing your mind

If you want to know how your information is being handled, or you want something removed, just ask. Contact us and we will deal with it.