By Abbey Cannan
Marriage equality, Indigenous recognition, and Voluntary Assisted Dying are just a few of the reasons Tewantin local Martin O’Shannessy was recognised in the inaugural King’s Honour List with a Member of the Order of Australia (AM).
Martin, who moved to Tewantin about five years ago to be closer to family, has been honoured for his significant service to social research and public polling.
“It’s actually quite a pleasant surprise and a little bit humbling, that someone out there thought so well of you that they would nominate you for this. I’m very happy about it,“ Martin said.
He was the chief executive officer at Newspoll for a decade and a former lead social researcher in an expert panel on Constitutional Recognition of Indigenous Australians.
“I started in the coal mines in Wollongong as a cadet and here I am all these years later,“ Martin said.
In his important work in social research, Martin assisted the campaign for marriage equality, and Go Gentle Australia regarding assisted dying in the Victorian Legislative campaign.
“It’s interesting those social issues that I got involved in such as Indigenous recognition and assisted dying, not because you take a side, but because polling tells the guys who are trying to make a decision, what people out there really think,“ Martin said.
“For me it was really important that you can make a contribution not by backing one side or the other, obviously there’s always an answer, but that you actually could come up with what the position of the man on the street and the woman on the street is.
“That’s been very rewarding to be able to make a contribution to those big things.“
He said one of the most exciting things he’s been involved with was Indigenous recognition, helping the Boomerang Alliance through his work.
“I think these things are very important and we have to be working on them,“ he said.
“So putting the view of the person on the street into the minds of the people who are trying to make those policies has been extremely rewarding for me.“
Martin said in his years of public polling there was a certain result in public opinion which surprised him the most.
“It was a pretty controversial topic, but it was about assisted dying, where people could choose if our terminally ill get help to go on their way,“ he said.
“Generally speaking, it was a topic that seemed to be more popular with Labor voters. You generally think there’s a lot of resistance especially in Victoria among the Upper House members in Liberal Party. When we did the polling it turned out that Liberal Party voters were just as interested in the topic as anybody else and we got this picture that it was more about how old you are.
“Generally, a majority of people thought that it was basically OK. That was a big surprise and led to a different way of thinking about it on both sides of politics.
“There’s been lots of interesting things like that and generally speaking the divide that people put on political matters probably isn’t quite as obvious as you’d think.“
Martin currently spends his days in market research and repairing guitars.
“I still own a market research firm called Omnipoll and I’m a third partner in that. Although, I’m now a very low key operator there, hardly any work at all,“ he said.
“A hobby of mine, which is repairing people’s guitars, has turned into a small side hustle for me. So, I’m quite busy looking after musicians and helping them to fix up their instruments.”
If Martin could go back and give advice to his 21-year-old self, he would say “Worry less, do more, and stick to what you believe in“.
