Media

There’s an asterisk on a lot of political analysis, a rider at the end of deliberations about the impact of this or that event: “So long as the voters haven’t stopped listening.” When Malcolm Turnbull pulled off a budget policy flip that would have made Nadia Comăneci proud, we all pondered whether he had outmanoeuvred...Continue reading

Australia is a representative democracy. Citizens who are equal, with a shared responsibility for good government, elect people of different backgrounds and perspectives to set community standards. Those elected are not obliged to tell the truth or act in the public interest or forbidden to act in their own interests or the interests of their...Continue reading

The troubled Geelong City Council is likely to go to election in October after the Victorian Government announced it supported recommendations from a group of local residents. The council was sacked last year and put into administration following a report which found it was so dysfunctional it could not govern properly. Councillors, including high-profile mayor...Continue reading

Infrastructure Victoria’s experience shows citizen juries can play a vital role in delivering major milestones. This lends weight to the idea of institutionalising deliberative democracy. Infrastructure Victoria’s year-long journey to create a 30-year infrastructure strategy was a big undertaking for the newly formed organisation of around 30 people. It knew it was crucial to get...Continue reading

RECENTLY I was contacted by The Daily Telegraph’s Andrew Clennell about a story on the number of younger than average people who are ministers in Premier Gladys Berejiklian’s Cabinet. A range of ages is a good thing and nothing to be concerned about. What concerns me is the lack of breadth of experience we find...Continue reading

By Sebastian Rosenberg, The Conversation Citizen panels and juries around the world are having their say about how health funding is prioritised and allocated. It’s time this happened in Australia, particularly when it comes to deciding how best to carve up Australia’s limited resources for tackling mental health. This is because constructively engaging with the...Continue reading

New report coincides with art exhibition at Dunfermline Fire Station Collective developing designs for a national monument to citizenship.A DETAILED plan for a new Citizens’ Assembly, acting as a second revising chamber in the Scottish Parliament, has been published by Common Weal, the Sortition Foundation and newDemocracy in a new report. ‘A Citizens’ Assembly for...Continue reading

By Janette Hartz-Karp, The Conversation All governments would like to overcome impasses caused by contentious issues. Particularly when they turn into a political slanging match, the result is loss of money, time and public trust. Take the decades-old, contentious dilemma in Western Australia of whether to build the Roe 8 highway through the Beeliar wetlands...Continue reading

Krystian Seibert. Comment. Sydney Morning Herald, 9 January 2017 The recent release of the Australian National University’s election study showed that just under half of respondents were not satisfied with the state of democracy in Australia, the lowest level since the 1970s. It’s not surprising that there’s such a level of disillusionment. One explanation may...Continue reading