In the thirty years preceding Federation in Australia, the largest membership organisation in the country was a mutual and friendly society called The Australian Natives’ Association (ANA). More than any other organisation, the ANA helped give birth to Australian nationhood and the Commonwealth of Australia in 1901.
Today, ANA sporting clubs can still be found across Australia. Some large insurance and mutual funds still carry the name ANA in their names. Many doctors, nurses and pharmacists were employed by the ANA, through its local branches or ‘lodges’. It was a mutual society of a kind that has largely disappeared from contemporary Australia. It didn’t just advocate for the country’s well-being; it sought to build our national well-being, through social, educational, health, sporting, business and financial initiatives.
In 2026, Australia has lost its way. We’ve lost our national vision and our pioneering spirit. We have a Commonwealth in name only – Australians are increasingly divided by wealth, generation, ethnicity, religion and aspiration. Our politicians and institutions are distrusted by most of us. Politics can’t heal this loss of trust.
The Australian Project aims to get us back on track. We are a social movement, based on the historical precedent of the ANA. We can’t rely on politics to build social cohesion or our common wealth anymore. We have to do it as our forbears did it, 150 years ago – through local groups, practical initiatives, and mutual enterprise – which build up our capacity and the confidence to trust each other in advancing our well-being. Without capacity and confidence, politics can’t rebuild a nation.
When the ANA used the word ‘Natives’ in 1871, they meant Australians who were born here, as distinct from those born in Europe or elsewhere. That’s not the right word for us in 2026 – about one third of us today were born outside Australia. And like many organisations of its time, the ANA also restricted its membership to men. Those features are now antiquated, but its method of advancing the well-being of its members, through a combination of social activities, education, business enterprise and advocacy of national well-being, was comprehensive and holistic, and has an enduring appeal in an age of fragmented identities and polarising division.
In 2026 we sorely need an open, inclusive membership-based association in Australia that has a similar methodology. We need a contemporary way to bring together all who now call Australia home, to work together in making our common home a truly convivial, cohesive and prosperous nation for all.
The Australian Project is an opt-in social movement. It will have local chapters across the country. They will take social, educational, health, business and financial initiatives as they see fit. And they will cultivate leadership for a nation aiming to get back on track. There are many possible ways they can act.
We invite your membership and participation. The membership form is below.
The Australian Project
Goals
1. The development of Australia as a mature, independent, sovereign nation, with a prosperous, debt-free mixed economy, a healthy civil society, an open, tolerant culture, and a well-functioning self-governing democracy.
2. The development of Australian citizenship as a status comprising rights and responsibilities in equal measure, including a responsibility for self-improvement, fluency in English language, informed participation in self-government, voluntary service to others, and contribution to the life of the nation.
3. The development of institutions of science, the arts, commerce and industry, and charity which advance the welfare, security, and dignity of Australians.
4. The development of Australians as people of good character with a capacity to contribute generously to family and community life, act ethically in business and professional affairs, contribute with courtesy in dealings with others, and exercise modesty and restraint in public life.
5. The development of a natural, organic Australian culture and ethos which reflects an inclusive, multi-ethnic, multi-faith society with a high degree of social and cultural interaction across differences in generation, ethnicity, faith, and lifestyle.
Method
We are an opt-in social movement, aiming for a large membership. We will have local chapters across the country. They will take social, educational, health, business and financial initiatives as they see fit. And they will cultivate leadership for a nation aiming to get back on track.
We hope that our local chapters will be able to fill the social vacuum in Australian life. Local associations that were once part of local community life in Australia have either declined and disappeared, having lost their purpose or relevance; or have turned themselves into contractors for government services, losing their independence in the process.
A big hole remains in the space they once occupied.
In filling this hole, we hope to do the following:
We aim to better our own lives together. Over time, we hope this will also change the wider society. We seek to “be the change we want to see in the world”.
We will build an opt-in movement of mutual empowerment, rather than try to “capture the state” or “reform” government through political organising or lobbying.
We will build our own large-scale businesses, rather than attempt to change modern corporate behaviour.
We will focus on building rich, deep, and enduring relationships at the local community level, establishing groups that meet face-to-face in various formats in every suburb and town.
We will re-establish the idea of education as a liberating force in people’s lives not just a sifting device for distributing economic privilege to the most adept. This means extending education beyond the current childhood and institutional frameworks into the whole of life, on an ongoing basis, to lift everyone up where we are, not just give a chance to an able few to get somewhere better.
We will provide forums in which we can learn from one another and debate respectfully. This will include aspects of social participation and personal conduct – how we live our lives; how we prioritise our time and resources; and how we can improve our relationship skills to build lasting connections and supportive communities.
We will not align ourselves with any specific political, philosophical or religious tradition, but we will learn from the distilled wisdom of each, seeing them as resources we can draw upon to enrich our lives and deepen our understanding of ourselves and each other.
We will form and promote our own social leaders as people with natural (not organisationally acquired) leadership skills to guide and inspire individuals and communities to better their lives through mutual empowerment.
Unlike movements which focus on creating physically separate ‘intentional communities’, we aim to be a social movement that is locally connected but still anchored in the mainstream of society. We want to create an opt-in “village” life within the mainstream.
Chapters
Local Chapters will be suburb level, walking-distance communities that hold regular meetings and enable participants to develop practical mutual supports. We will invite existing groups – neighbourhood, faith, sporting and community service groups – to host local chapters of The Australian Project.
Local Chapters will develop their own priorities and projects. We envisage each hub will typically undertake a combination of:
– social activities, occasional shared meals, festivities;
– local English language learning and conversation practice; one-to-one teaching and learning in other languages;
– reading circles, group education;
– public forums;
– selected sharing economy activity;
– specialist mutual supports.
Australian Mutual Society
The Australian Mutual Society (AMS) will host The Australian Project and provide a mechanism for its implementation.
Early work in the development of a mutual society of this kind took place in 2017. It was undertaken by Evan Thornley, Miriam Josefas, and Vern Hughes. This Manifesto for The Mutual Society was published in 2017. The full version is available by following the link. The following extract is taken from the Manifesto:
“The Mutual Society is an opt-in social movement that seeks to enable its members to live a better life.
It is a response to political gridlock, institutional paralysis, and the collapse of a shared vision of a better life, at the very time when social fractures, economic divisions, and political tensions around the world are deepening. The narratives that guided our thinking about social change through the 20th century are no longer persuasive – political systems and corporations have proven highly resistant to reform, and philanthropy and charity are too limited in impact.
There is an older social tradition that we aim to revive – people getting together on the basis of shared values to create the communities we want to live in and build the businesses we need.
We aim to do this on a large scale, as a mass movement with over one million members in Australia, extending internationally as we are able.
We will combine 21st century technology and business models (social networks, social commerce, crowd-funding, the sharing economy, and social reputation engines) with a 19th century organisational form – the mutual society.
This combination of technology and mutuality can enable us to establish new institutions and large-scale businesses to serve the well-being of our members:
We can supply our members as consumers with the services we want, treating members as people instead of numbers;
We can create businesses in which our members can work and be treated as people and not commodities;
We can compete in business activity by cutting out the sales, marketing and distribution line item and supplying directly to members;
We can financially sustain The Mutual Society through member-based business enterprises, without financial dependence on external sources.
We are not a political party, religious community or a for-profit business. Our membership is diverse and includes people with various religious, cultural and political affiliations. What unites us is our core belief about the primacy of relationships and mutuality.
We believe that our relationships – with family, friends, social networks and communities – are the most important factor in determining our social and material well-being. We therefore aim to help each other strengthen and extend our relationships, and counter societal forces that would ignore or diminish them.
We do this by building a network of local community hubs, large-scale business enterprises, and adult education endeavours, based on the principle of mutuality – owned and controlled by members, and governed by values that enhance mutual well-being.
We stand for co-operation more than competition, substance over superficiality, and leadership over managerialism.”
The Australian Project
Membership Form
Please complete this form to become a member of The Australian Project. Please indicate how you might like to contribute to the establishment process.
The Membership Fee is $25. This is a one-time fee.
