A group of Orange residents formed a community hub to lobby government to "help make Orange the best place anyone would want to live".

The group is in its infancy and has only met once, but ideally it is designed to act as a representative of what Orange residents want and need, without having to rely on elected representatives who pick and choose what issues to lobby their governments for.

"The first meeting was basically designing what the hub was going to be, what its vision was for a better Orange, a better area, a better region," she said.

For example, Mrs McDonell said she hoped Orange could be a place full of cultural diversity, a place where racists and bigots would not dare visit.

The hub is a way for her to speak with like-minded people and come up with initiatives to ensure that goal is achieved. 

The idea is loosely based on a grassroots political movement called the Australian Progressives, but Mrs McDonell stressed members of the hub did not have to align with the party, rather, the group only adopted some of the key values. 

"Those values are ethics, empathy, evidence, empowerment, equality and engagement," she said.

"Politics has become a dirty word and you'd be hard-pressed to find a politician where you can say that person has a lot of integrity, you can trust that person.

"We're a group of people, by demonstrating that we care, we're also demonstrating that we're willing to get out there and achieve something."

Mrs McDonell is calling on anyone in the Calare electorate who is also disillusioned with the "top down" approach of Australian politics and is passionate about making the community a better place to contact the group.

"We want to affect change at a community level,” she said.

Contact melanie.mcdonell@gmail.com for information.