Read our submission here. We thank the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters for this opportunity to contribute to the inquiry into the administration of the 2023 NSW state election and other matters, including political donations and truth in political advertising. Reforms to the political donations and campaign financing laws in New South Wales must...Continue reading
Gaza needs democracy without elections
By Iain Walker, March 14, 2024, published by the Jerusalem Post. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu receives regular criticism for failing to share the plan for Gaza after the military role concludes. The lack of an official position on this subject could stem from the fact that all over options are unattractive, and so a new approach is...Continue reading
Convene a Citizens’ Assembly to Address Housing Affordability
By Luca Belgiorno-Nettis, 4 March 2024, published by The Mandarin. The issue of housing affordability isn’t going away – even though it seemed that the Albanese Government had settled the matter last year. Now the Greens are baulking over the ‘Help to Buy’ bill. In September, the government passed what it described as ”Landmark legislation...
North Sydney Community Housing Forum
newDemocracy received a brief from Climate 200 to explore how electorate-level engagement could be improved by applying deliberative principles. We agreed that local Members of Parliament (of all parties) could better engage with a wider range of citizens if a more representative and meaningful approach could be developed. newDemocracy undertook a pilot project with Member...Continue reading
Could the Voice referendum process have benefitted from an Irish-style Citizens’ Assembly?
By Luca Belgiorno-Nettis, 24 Nov, 2023 and published by the ABC. The divisions surrounding the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice to Parliament had as much to do with referendum process as anything else. The Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters missed a golden opportunity earlier this year when, in proposing a Bill to reform...
North Sydney Community Housing Forum
North Sydney Community Housing Forum
A trail of one-upmanship
By Luca Belgiorno-Nettis, in The Mandarin 3/8/2023 The way we do politics is all wrong, and the Voice highlights how bone-headed our system is. As the political scientist and my former co-director, Ian Marsh, said: ‘Firstly, political incentives undercut bipartisanship. Secondly, since the primary channel for the leaders is the media, there is no systemic ability to...Continue reading
Association of Australian Medical Research Institutes Deliberative Panel
In May 2023, the Association of Australia Medical Research Institutes (AAMRI) hosted a deliberative panel made up of 30 randomly-selected people drawn from medical research institute staff and researchers from across the country and stratified to match the medical research institute workforce in Australia by gender, seniority, job type and institute type. Over the course...
If politicians can’t fix the housing crisis, can the people do it for them?
Peter Hartcher, Sydney Morning Herald – June 10, 2023 Australia is an entire continent that is failing to build enough homes for the population of a mere city, but the federal government’s plan to fix the crisis has hit a brick wall. That wall is political intransigence. Specifically, it’s the Coalition and the Greens. They’ve combined...Continue reading
Citizens’ juries can help fix democracy
Citizens’ juries can help fix democracy Western polities are ailing — deliberative assemblies would revivify them By Martin Wolf “Brexit has failed.” This is now the view of Nigel Farage, the man who arguably bears more responsibility for the UK’s decision to leave the EU than anybody else. He is right, not because the Tories...Continue reading