He is a board member of the Brotherhood of St Laurence and the Chifley Research Centre, was a founding director of GetUp!, and a founding officer of the National Union of Students.
Senator Allison also joined Bob Brown and Kate Lundy in a joint political advertisement sponsored by GetUp! urging voters to prevent the Senate from becoming a rubber stamp for the government of the day.
The law was repealed just prior to the 2010 Federal election, when advocacy group GetUp! won a High Court decision deeming the changes unconstitutional.
Nye Perram J agreed with Getup regarding the acceptability of electronic signatures noting that it resembled one which had been faxed or emailed and thus would have been accepted by the Commissioner.
In 2012, a few months after stepping down as National Director of GetUp, Sheikh successfully ran for pre-selection in the ACT as an Australian Greens Senate candidate for the 2013 Federal Election.
On one show in 2012 a fellow panellist (GetUp! director and unsuccessful Greens Senate candidate Simon Sheikh) had a seizure live on air, with his head falling forward on the desk.