From Minister to Carer: Victor Dominello’s Most Personal Challenge

Foreign.

Ultimately, if you create something that is useful and usable, then I think most people will adopt. Ultimately, whether you're in the private sector or public sector, unfortunately, or in the public sector, it's. It's really difficult to get those two qualities because government is just a beast with so many silos. So to make something useful and usable, you need to normally have that horizontal type lens rather than the. All these vertical silos. And that's why it's really, really hard inside a government. But I think if you deliver that, people have shown en masse and pretty quickly, mind you, obviously Covid accelerated the journey because we then introduced more useful and usable lines, product lines in the service app that people will adopt. So Australians, but definitely in New South Wales as a test bed, show that we are early adopters. If you got the right product and.

I remember Gladys Berejiklian, who, you know, I owe a lot of credit to because things don't happen without leadership. And I had her leadership. So she gave me the air cover I needed to go crazy. So it wasn't Glad a lot of this wouldn't have happened. But I remember Glad telling me a story early on in the piece where she. She would literally take a book to the RTA because she knows that she was going to be there for a few hours.

I would literally have to take the morning off work to go and renew myself. Like, it was crazy.

You would factor that in. Yeah, I've got to go to the rta. There's a half the day gone.

It's not great for staff, it's not great for anybody. It's not great for the people. The RTA was so visionary at the time. They. They had the perspective screens before COVID you know, they were training us for Covid, you see, with all the perspective screens and Form 1Q. But you look at the modern service Centers now, there's no perspective screens. People come in and even if they are upset or frustrated, the CSAT scores show that when they come out, they come out with smile effects. In fact, on the service centers, last time I checked, it was like 98% thumbs up. Like, crazy good for government. It's been huge crazy good for government.

Well, look, I've been blessed. I believe that there's that parable in the Bible that says the widow with talents, like the widow puts two coins in the tray and then you got the wealthy person at the front putting a million dollars in the tray. And me personally, how come I didn't get them? Well, because I gave you so much opportunity and this is all you give back, that I didn't give her anything and she gave more than that. Right. So I feel like I have been blessed with so much opportunity in my life. I've got a lot more I've got to give back before I sort of, you know, try and knock on the door to Pearly Gates. So what I'm trying to do is think, all right, well, with all these opportunities I got through, particularly my journey in New South Wales, in the, in the government there for 12 years, how do I bottle that up and then create knowledge or share that community or knowledge? The best way to do that is through building a global community and then we can start sharing best practices so we can help governments evolve from a 2.0, which is a government G2, which is very silo driven, to a government 3.0, which is the stuff that you and I were just talking about, which is human driven and put the human at the center, get rid of all the dross and the noise, don't worry about the silos. We don't need to know about that. We just need to make sure that you get your services really fast, really efficient, really safe, so you can get on with your life. You don't need government in your life.

Somebody once said to me, the harder you work, the luckier you get. But some things you just. Doors just open up. I never wanted to be a politician in the sense that when Gladys asked me to run for parliament, I said no.

Stage, I was a lawyer, I was a part of law firm and I was just starting to. Now you get to a certain threshold where you actually seen the same case a thousand times before. So you know your stuff, right? And it's not like you can take a breather, but you can actually be more strategic than in your thought rather than just working like a machine. And I got to that point thinking, okay, I sort of know my stuff now.

Yeah, catch my breath. And then I said, oh, no time for you to go back into the machine and start working like a crazy person again. So I said no. But then my mom, because my dad passed away when I was 30, a tragic accident. My mum never remarried. She's just mum and dad, soul mates. So my mum and my two sisters said, look, you should do it. In fact, it was a. It was a 2:1 vote to the family vote. It was a 2:1 vote. My Earth angel sister, who's the primary carer for my mum now, she said, don't do it like we'll never see you again. Politics are full of idiots. You know, you've got a good reputation now, you work hard, you've earned all this. Why would you throw all this away to go into it assessed pit of politics? But my other sister said, do it. And then my mum said, your dad be proud. So that was a clincher for me.

Yeah, Gladys. I had a few other people, like my partner and my law firm at the time was saying, what, you're going to leave me on the lurch here? Like so, you know, I had. That's why I thought, look, I'll just put it to the family vote because I had competing interests as to whether I do or not. But these opportunities, when I said that was an extraordinary opportunity and it was a gift. And then I got elected in and I had no idea what it was like to be a minister. I remember Barry o', Farrell, who was the premier at the time, he said to me, you know, if you were to be a minister, what would it be? And I thought, oh, geez, I don't know anything about being a minister. Like, just give me something stuff I know, like multiculturalism. So I sort of know that I can do volunteering. I can do that, you know, I can't. I can't wreck up.

I didn't go in with a representative agenda. I didn't. Why I was. I. I wanted to be a lawyer, but they said, look, there's an opportunity to make profound change inside of Parliament and government. I was in opposition for two and a half years, but then when Barry gave the ministries out, I was fortunate enough to get one. And you also threw in Aboriginal affairs, and I had no understanding at all. But what that taught me, particularly the first four years when I was a minister, there was how to listen, because I knew. I knew nothing. And the Aboriginal community was so good to me. Shizo was so good to me. They must have known I was a greenhorn, but they literally held my hand. They really showed me the power of storytelling as well. I learned so much in those first four years. Then the next four years, happenstance. I got innovation and better egg. And then last four years, Covid, and I was there, like, all these sliding door moments, opportunities that I didn't curate. Yeah, they just happened. I mean, I just happened to be there.

Is, you know, So I guess I took those opportunities. Yeah.

Yeah.

So I'm still learning now.

I wake up every day, like, I realize how little I do know. You know, I just think the great source of leadership, for successful leadership, is to surround yourself with people far better than you, and that's.

No, it's. It's the ability to. The most important muscle in the AI age is your deltoid. Put your hand up, ask the question. Because if you're not asking questions, then you're left behind.

Oh, wow, there's so many. Maybe. Can I preface all this? Like, the only reason that we went public about this was, again, it wasn't through my courage or. Or anything, it was through my sisters. What happened was because it's so deeply private and I feel. I really feel that you obviously approached and I respect so much the work you're doing. And my mom's specialist also reached out and said about the same time, look, you know, we need to put some public awareness around this and your mom would be a great candidate for that public awareness. And I've resisted up until that point because I could have talked about this six years ago, I could have spoken about it in Parliament.

No, because I feel so. Yeah, I feel so guarded for her privacy and. And she's not in a position where she can voluntarily release that privacy. So I'm. But then when I again spoke to my sisters and they're amazing people, and I said straight off the bat, look, it's great for public awareness, it's for the greater. Mum would have appreciated this. So that's why we're talking about it. So. Oh, look, during those, particularly last four or five years, I'd go to Mum's place religiously and we do cooking together. Mum is a phenomenal cook. A phenomenal cook. You know, she could put a brick in between two pieces of bread and still taste good. Right? Like, she's amazing. She would never want me in the kitchen when I was a kid, like, because I'm in control of the kitchen in a very gentle, beautiful way. But, no, you go and study. Let me do this. One of the many love languages was food. But through her dementia journey, she invited me into the kitchen more because she needed more help as well. So we started cooking more together. Initially, I would just do the preparation and Mum would do the cooking. And then. And then I'd start doing the cooking as well with her. And then towards the end, Mum would just do the preparation. And so, you know, that journey. And in many ways, like, I did a social media post every Sunday, but for me it was a catalog of a journey for four or five years of that beautiful bond that we've got.

She's always in control and absolute purpose.

Yes. And I.

I say, mum, what do you want to do? You're into this or that, and. But Mum would always say, what would you like to do, son? So what about this? Okay. Yeah, so. But the point is, it was a dialogue and, you know, it was a precious, precious time.

This Catherine in particular is just extraordinary. Yeah.

Sure. But I'm easy in the sense that my journey's been nothing compared to, like, Catherine, you know, look at her, she's a nurse angel. Like, she looked after Mum for a year. She's a primary school teacher. She gave up her job. She's doing, you know, emergency foster care. She's got beautiful kids and amazing husband. Like, you know, I can't imagine putting myself in her shoes and the stress and. And the burden on her should. I've got an easy life compared to her.

So, you know, I respect where it's due.

Superhuman.

I'm reasonably well versed with government and forms. Don't get me started on forms.

You know, that a crusade against these damn things and how to streamline processes. So I'm used to all the frustration. But when you are in, you know, the boiler room, it's very Different. I'm really busy as well with a million things going on in my life and Catherine Marie, but they've got, everyone's got a million things going on in their lives. But when someone said we got to do this, well, what do we do? Like there's no one stop shop like service, New South Wales top approach, one stop shop to guide you through. That's really overwhelming. And you know what happens is you, you say to your family, what do we do next? What do we do next? So you go and explore that. You go and explore that. You. It is, it's really bad. It's really bad.

Oh, constantly changing.

Yeah. And constantly changing in, you know, in my mum's journey, like her personal journey is constantly changing, let alone our worlds. And then you're going to have to update forms and, and to be honest, it gets to a point where it's just too hard. So you just think, I'll just leave that to the end, you know, well, let's spend quality time with mum. Right. That's the quality time we'll get to the forms and everything else, you know, that becomes second, third, fourth order priority. But you quickly realize that without that support in place, you know, looking after some quality time with mum gets harder as well. Right. So it's a double whammy. It's a pressure cooker. If that was working seamlessly, then that would enable this ordinarily difficult challenge in our lives to be a bit smoother.

Well, yes, yes.

Yeah.

And like Musa, I used to be a litigation lawyer, so I know how to read a document. I. I used to pass move laws in Parliament. I know about laws. Right. And I struggled, really struggled. Imagine somebody that doesn't have English as a first language, or somebody that doesn't have a supporting, loving family around them because, you know, things are fracturing. Like if I found it hard, it is unconscionable what other people would be going through.

Well, I think the burden is obviously with dementia that the person going through dementia, they, they go through a lot of decline. But for the families, it's like a long goodbye. It's not like it's static. You go through Plato, drop, plateau drop, bladder drop, and every drop you feel like it's another goodbye that you're not getting back.

Yeah, it's constant grief. Like I went through, you know, profound grief with my dad, but that was just intense shock. But this is very long and yeah, very. It's very challenging.

Like there is. Mum is fiercely independent and she would never wanted to go into a home, never. And we never want to her to end up there. But the reality is you get to a point where you need 24, 7 care.

It's the right place, right time. And you know, we never wanted that to happen. But again, she needed proper professional care at that point. We'd still go and visit every day, but. But still, if when we had those discussions at the beginning, Mum was saying, no, I don't, I'll be okay, I'll be okay, she'd be in denial initially, I don't have dementia. I don't have dementia. They've got dementia. I don't have dementia. And then we point out little things, say, mum, oh, look, you know, you forgot to turn the stove off or something like that. Yeah, I think it's time to move in with Catherine. I don't want to move in with Catherine. Why don't you just go and help Catherine out? Catherine needs a hand to look after the kids. Oh, okay, I'll do that. And then so we graduated that way. But the real hard part, once it was, then transitioning into a home like that was really, really hard. And there's a small window where I think you can do it.

No, what we did, we went like all the nursing homes we went to were very good, but it's just the timing. Like the first time we went again, my sisters stayed overnight with her. She had slept in the room, they did the room up. But Mum was still aware enough to know this is not my place, like, why am I here? Type thing. And that was just crushing for us because we feel like we've let her down and we've abandoned her. And no one wants to do that because she's done so much for us. Like, we can't give enough back for mum. So Catherine said, no, I can't leave mum here. She's. She's still too aware. And then tried again and then still no. And then the third time, by that stage, Mum was dementia had evolved to a point where she wasn't as distressed. Moving in, she's not constantly saying, I need to go home, I need to go home. This is now her home and she's adopted that. And finding that that place was really hard.

Oh, that was tough. Yeah, that was tough. Yeah. No, we hated it.

Yeah. Again, governments, when they work well in their silo in their domains, like if you've just got an health issue. Generally, government, particularly in Australia and most advanced countries, they provide pretty good services in the scary things. Right. But that's in the silo. But when we need to go and join up services such as the stuff that we're talking about here, where it's not just one department looking after you 24 7, it's, you know, you need to go this department and then you need to fill out that form and that department, then you've got to go over here and you and I will make the jump between the various verticals. We won't like it, it'll be painful, it'll be traumatic, but we will make the jump. But if you're vulnerable, you're not going to make the jump and you'll fall between the cracks and it gets worse and worse. And a lot of people, for example, find themselves in a homeless situation. That's a typical example of people falling between the cracks. Right. So typically you have a job, love your job, you've been there for 30 years, you lose your job because of change, then all of a sudden you can't cope, you can't find another job, so you get onto substance abuse, then you abuse your partner, then you end up in jail, and then you're not treated well there, and then you're on the street because, you know, you lost your family, then you're homeless. Right. So that equals employment, industrial relations at the beginning, intersection with the court, intersection with detention, crime. Then you've got NGOs asking you questions all the time, like, these are people literally falling between the cracks at every critical point.

Correct.

Correct. So the system is not designed to look after that horizontal journey, because I think if it did, then you would stop a lot of the trauma at the top of the river rather than.

It's a massive life transition and it's part of life. You know, there's no avoiding it. You're going to go through not one.

That's right. It is a life transition. There's, you know, there's some big life events that people go through. This is one of them.

I'm a bit of a, you know, tech junkie, but not because, you know, I like my toys. It's far from it. I just want to reduce suffering, but in a big way and improve quality of life on the other side of that coin. So, you know, how do you reduce suffering? Well, we can all get on our knees and pray for a miracle. All of us, the APN or whatever we are in the world now, get on our knees, pray for a miracle and let the blind see, the deaf hear and the lame to walk right. But it's not going to happen. But if we use tech responsibly, we will get modern miracles. And it's not just in terms of cochlear or stuff they're doing in relation to robotic vision now. It's crazy how it is wild and it's going to continue to improve, but it's also in, in terms of service delivery, how do we use tech and platforms to synthesize all this mess and noise to make it work?

And also that one day might be hypothetically, 10, 20 years, look at all the people that are going to suffer between that time.

Yeah, well, the service model I think, shows that you can do that. You know, we've always got the physical service centers. There's always going to be a place for the human in the loop, as it were. But not everyone needs that. You know, a lot of people would rather go, click, click on the phone.

Yeah, 10:00 clock at night. You know, you do you. Or actually I, you know, pick up the phone and talk to somebody. Like there's multiple channels. But I think most people, most people would say, look, give me the fastest, easiest, safest way to do it. Because if I need to see someone, I've got to physically get up, I've got to get into my car, I've got to walk there. It takes time and sometimes, you know, time is the most precious thing. So you think, I need that help right now, quick.

Spot on.

Yeah, so I, one of my, you know, I made a lot of mistakes in my life, but one of the big wake up calls for me again, using my mum as an example, was when I was ministering and we were rolling out those Covid vouchers. Right. And. But also the QR chickens. And I remember, like, I was just so determined to get as many people onto the platform as we could because at the time, no one knew what was going to happen. We were worried, was this going to mutate up into the brain?

It was a terrifying time. No one wanted to go to school.

Bit of a hindsight. Oh, yeah. We know we should never have done this student. At the time, everyone was saying, I'm not even going to take my kids to school. We don't know what this is going to do, we'd say, you know, you can't go to a venue now unless you check in pen and paper, blah, blah, blah. That was massive privacy concerns. But privacy just went out the window. But not just privacy concerns, like, you know, security concerns, like we were hearing people, you know, a lady would be writing her name and phone number and address for contact tracing and then somebody behind would just be taking a photocopy, right?

No. You know, somebody was going to have to digest a double entry. It was. It was just crazy. It was just not fit for purpose. So. And then people said, well, we'll download apps. We can download your own app. Every time you go to a new venue, I'm gonna put in, you know, and that was cocky. So when things become really clunky and awkward, people, not everyone, a lot will say, look, my name is Mickey Mouse. You know, a couple of zeros, like, yeah, just get me into the door, right? And you just need one person and the system code contract, tracing collapses. So I said, no, we'll go through the service app, we'll make it. You just tell us once and bang, click, click, click. You don't have to download every damn form ever again. And that took off. And I remember Mum saying to me one day, she said, oh, son, can you help me download the qr? You know, checking code on the app? Of course, Mum, I'm the Minister for Innovation. I'm Minister for Digital.

I sort of know a little bit about this and I was so embarrassed. What's up? Because I looked at Mum's phone and it was so old, right, it couldn't even download the operating system, so she couldn't even get the QR reader. I thought, you bloody idiot. You know, you've left behind some of the most vulnerable people that we're trying to protect, including your mum. You've left them by. You haven't designed for that. Whereas most people could have gone and got on their phone and got on really fast, there was a cohort of people that I neglected. I can still remember the time looking in the ceiling thinking, you idiot. So what we did, we reversed engineered that and then we said, well, what we'll do, service will give you a QR code in the form of a QR card. And then every time you go to Woolworths or Coles, they can get you. So they got the data, so they can then feed it into the system. Right. So we reversed engineered that experience. But the point is it just taught me you can use tech in that situation to be inclusive. But the biggest lesson for me is it has to be part of the design. It should never be part of a bolt on. So when you're designing tech, you know, inclusion has to be a design element.

True.

We were millions of people, miles an hour. We're building and flying the planes.

No, because then I was, you know, I was doing a lot of research at the time as to what Singapore and Korea, Vietnam, because they went through SARS and mers. I was looking at what their trends were doing. So I was getting a lot of insights from there. So. But look, we got there in the.

It was a scratch thing pre Covid. But hey, it's got a lot of.

Oh, look again. Look at my sister like she's literally given up her job as a teacher to look after my mum as a full time carer. She's now, we're now into that next phase where she's now getting back into the workforce. But that took a while to do that. So that whole transition, you know, was about a year or two. And that's painful emotionally, financially.

Yeah, that's why these carers are superheroes in my books. And then like, for me, I'm not married, don't have kids, so I'm married to, literally married to my work, which is not healthy. But you know, I've got a very tough partner in that sense. But mum is a huge priority for me. So, you know, I'm the minimum two days a week and yeah, I'll leave it three o', clock, spend time with mum and get home by about 7:30, something like that. But you know, if I wasn't doing that, I'd be more productive at work. Right. So yeah, it does take a big toll. And then there's all the other time that you're spending worrying and you know, looking for solutions and you know, trying to find out what the best thing to do is. And you know, that takes time, mental.

It's emotionally, mentally exhausting. So then you've got to shift into the brain to say, all right, well now I'm focused back on work again. So yeah, it is really, really tough.

Well, as you said, like, you know, there is a demand for talent at the moment. We're all scratch around for talent. If workplaces don't accommodate this, then the talent will go to a place that does.

The fire is not on the toes yet, but I think the fire is going to come up and start coming underneath us really soon. As you say, like there is a proverbial tsunami coming in terms of percentages. Unless something dramatic happens, like, well, there's going to be one of two outcomes. People are either going to be left to their own devices and really, really suffer though. I. E. The. The people with dementia and their journey is not supported in a beautiful, caring way.

Which is just heartbreaking. Or the care is going to take a lot of load and then go over there and then there's not going to be the productivity in the workforce. So there's going to have to be some give. I'm sorry, there's just going to have to be a reckoning at some point. Pretty quickly, I would have thought so.

Yep.

Yeah, it's hard. Everybody thinks they're invincible, everybody thinks they're going to live forever and nothing's ever going to happen to them. But the reality is it's going to impact a lot of people.

Yeah. And if you take them out and then again that then goes to the diversity issue as well. Like, you know, in the tech sector in particular. The tech sector has a major challenge in relation to getting more women in there because women equals diversity. Women and a whole lot of other things equal diversity. So if you take women out, that's 50%, like that's crazy. In a sector that needs it more.

Yeah, it's a real blunt chop. It's going to be very choppy next five, ten years for sure.

Okay, 101 or government zero is paper government. This is, you know, full of forms, full of silos, you know, tell us, not once tell us 100 times, but generally in paper channels. A big meteor hit the planet in 1990, was called the Internet. And it forced every government to go from government zero to government 1.0 or G1. And they went from paper form to web form, but still in silos. Then 15 years later, in 2005, another big meteor hit the planet. Social media, smartphones. Right. And it forced every government around the world to go from G1 to G2. So we were interactive government at that point. So we're still in silos, digital channels and paper channels. But at least now we were starting to get some feedback on the phone. Thumbs up, thumbs down, social media, bit of feedback, don't like your services, try and improve here or there. Fifteen years later, another meteor hit the planet. And again, when I say meteors, they hit every government. So like it was just bespoke to New Zealand or it's just happened up in Canada. Every government around the world had these challenges and that was called Covid. It forced every government to start thinking G2 is not going to cut it anymore. These silos, these digital things are pretty cool. But we're not going to get through Covid unless we start connecting services. So a lot of governments started putting their toe in the water of what G3 could look like. You know, connected government. G3 meant, for example, you know, with the service app. If we didn't have a G3 architecture, what would have happened is the border pass would have been done by transportation. They would have issued you with app. A QR check in would have been done by police, they would have issued a police app. The vaccine certificates would have been issued by Health Health app. The time discovered vouchers would have been issued by Treasury. A Treasury app, like, you get the point. Like there would have been five or six different apps, different times. You have to complete and identify yourself. All these things that would have taken time. People would have seen.

You're never going to get the adoption rates or the satisfaction score scores. So people started thinking, okay, this works. And then AI started really coming over the top of that. But what's happened, Melissa, is that most governments went from G3. The crisis is over. Now we'll go back to G2 because the change between G0 and G1 is a tick change. G1 to G2 tech change G2 to G3. The tech exists. It's a culture change and it's a mindset. It's a mindset.

We could have done that with the tech.

Social media was doing that. Right. One front door. But that's a culture change or mindset change. That's hard. So, you know, that's what the Future Government Institute is about. Like, how do we get more from G2 to G3? Because then we've got to start preparing for the next big meteor that's going to hit the planet in another 15 years time. So 2035, everyone is going to have. If you've got a smartphone, you're going to have a Jarvis on your phone, you know, or in your glasses or on your ears or with the humanoid robotics coming out. And literally a Jarvis that's going to be in your home, right? You're going to have 6G communications, you're going to have some form of AGI, however you want to describe it. We'll probably be at the beginning of some enterprise level of quantum by that point. You know, it's going to be a very augmented world. It's not just going to be physical, physical. We're going to have Jiminy the Cricket and people talk, you know, bots talking, Aries. It's really going to be augmented, fundamentally different to where we are today. That's intelligent government, that's G4. We need new trust architecture for that and infrastructure for that. What does that look like? But most governments are squandering opportunities in G2 land and all this trauma is happening because they can't get to G3, let alone to G4.

Yeah, but through example. So again, service New South Wales was an example. Was the whole government fixed? No, but you know, your pockets are really good here and there. And generally when I go to government, so I do a lot of travel these days, I see a lot of good pockets here and there coming out. But generally the maturity levels are in the G2 space. But you get places like Singapore that have been really pushing that G3, what's.

Singapore. You know, the easiest part is if you get in the plane, you go to Singapore, it's passport less, not that.

Yeah, that's right. It's embarrassing. It's. It's just crazy stuff. A country as good as or great as Australia is, I wouldn't have thought.

It's not.

A lot of times. Like, we would be one of the few countries I would have left definitely in the oecd. Having said that, I went to Egypt the other day and I had to fill out a form, so I. But, you know, that's the land of the pyramid, so they love antiquity.

So. But, you know, New Zealand's got some people say, oh, biosecurity risk. Well, go across the ditch. I've got a little thing called the Kiwi over there. They've got to be very precious about their biosecurity as well. They've managed to do it like. It's got nothing to do with tech, it's all to do with culture and mindset, as you said. But in Singapore, they're moving ahead to passportless. Abu Dhabi is doing the same. Dubai. Then again, you go into the Nordic areas like Estonia and Finland and Denmark, and even there's pockets in the uk. Yeah, there's pockets here and there. But the big exemplars that I've seen that are moving really fast towards that G3 is, you know, Singapore, Finland, Estonia, that area, and the Middle east, they're moving really fast. And even Asia, parts of Asia, they're really moving fast.

Where government, rather than being reactive, can be proactive. So rather than getting an ambulance for you as you fall off the cliff, they're giving you support so you don't fall off the cliff. If we want to reduce suffering, that's how you do it. You don't do it by holding somebody's.

That's not reducing suffering. So that's how we. We need to evolve and fast.

Yeah, again I keep coming back to that service approach because it, because it works. It's demonstrably working. That telus once approach, that one stop shop people don't need all this noise in their life and forms is just noise, it's traumatic, it's piercing. So you know, how do we reduce that so that we have in the very precious time we've got put as much of that precious time, quality time with loved ones and yourself caring for yourself, giving you time to grieve and breathe rather than these richer damn processes that a. It's too hard to navigate. So if we that tell us once approach I think would take a lot.

It's doable.

In fact, if I was still there now I'm glad I'm out. But if I was still there, I'll never go back.

I'm glad I'm there, I'm glad I'm out. Never go back. But I'm super grateful. The opportunity. But if I was there, the road map that was planned out was digitize the birth certificate, digitize the marriage certificate, digitize the destin to be. You know, all these things like because we can do it. These are essentially credentials, you know, we can digitize and make them verifiable to source. Then all of a sudden that journey.

It's so much like I wouldn't even know like for my Personal. I wouldn't even know where it is. I applied for it recently. You know all these paper certificates, like they're meaningless these days because you can fabricate them so quickly.

So governments are going to get there eventually. It's a question of how long it's going to take them.

Oh, what really matters is time. I'm here constantly thinking about this. I'm here as a speck in space and time, but the speck of time I've got on this journey is so precious. So how much of that time can I spend with my mum and quality people in my life and how do I reduce the noise?

I got lucky. So that, so there's quality time with mum and then there's quality time in work. And that's the other thing I learned as a minister. When you're so busy, it's so easy to get on the treadmill and just go, go, go, go, go. But you need to give yourself time. And I think leaders need to sort of just literally pencil in some time during the day to think, to process. Where are the big levers I can pull here? Because otherwise I'm just going to be lost in the weeds and nothing gets done.

No. Or impact. Positive.

If you want really positive impact, you're going to have to give yourself time to think about it and give yourself that license.

There are better ways. Like again, I've been blessed. I've got two sisters, I've got a mum that, you know, we're very close knit family. So we came together. So very, very blessed. But you know, for families going through this journey, definitely reach out and ask for help. My sister put it perfectly with Violet. You know, when Catherine spoke to you, the first thing she said to me after she spoke to you, I wish I spoke to Melissa five years ago. So, you know, reach out. You don't have to be alone.

I'm building that global community. Trust me, the cavalry's coming.