Media

Premier Jay Weatherill | Democracy Renewal Forum Governments have lost the art of involving the people Democracy is not in crisis – it is just that governments have lost the art of talking to people about their concerns and involving them in the solutions. When Australians can still vote in free elections and influence government decision-making...Continue reading

Luca Belgiorno-Nettis | SMH Comment  Planning for human hives – our cities – could be strengthened by adopting the wise ways of bees. When honeybees move their hive, scouts “waggle dance” to persuade the swarm of the merits of the new location. “One of the popular misconceptions about honey bees is that they are ruled by...

Very quietly and far from the headlines, Canada has become something of a global leader in democratic innovation and experimentation. Here’s a good news story for anyone exhausted at the prospect of our current 77-day federal election and anxious about the health of Canadian democracy. You might never know it watching the endless reels of...Continue reading

As published on SMH on 25 August 2015 Luca Belgiorno-Nettis It has long been an axiom of government that the key to success is trust. As long ago as Confucius it was held that three things were needed for government – weapons, food and trust – but that if a ruler could not hang on to all three, they must guard...Continue reading

The parliamentary vote on same sex marriage is likely to be defeated, and the Prime Minister is advocating a range of options for what comes next. One is a national plebiscite on the issue at the next election. This would only be the third in Australia’s history.

By Michael Gordon, Political editor, The Age. What struck new MP Tim Watts most about question time when he took his seat in the Parliament after the last election was not the rancour, or the shallowness, or the pettiness or even the name-calling. It was the noise. So Watts downloaded a noise-meter on his iPad...Continue reading

Nicholas Ross Smith & Zbigniew Dumienski A report by Bernard Orsman published in the New Zealand Herald on the state of Auckland City Council found that 88 of the 99 positions in the council’s boardrooms and executive teams were filled by “white men from wealthy suburbs.” While nobody is suggesting that any of these individuals...Continue reading

Presented by Jonathan Green. Sunday 5 July 2015. Winston Churchill once said, “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others”. 70 years on, with a world facing unprecedented challenges including climate change and growing inequality, could our democratic system use a bit of tweaking? In the UK last week, a major...

Nicholas ReeceCitizen juries are one of the most promising innovations to emerge in the conversation about democratic renewal. Melbourne’s radical experiment in democracy has reached a momentous conclusion, with the City Council announcing on Friday it will accept nearly all the recommendations of a 10-year financial plan developed by a citizens’ jury. That a group...Continue reading