By Mark Evans*, Max Halupka* and Gerry Stoker* The Australian economy has experienced twenty years of economic growth. A remarkable performance that is unprecedented both historically and in comparison with other OECD countries over the period. Yet during the same time we have also witnessed a decade of democratic decline. Only 42% of Australians are...Continue reading
The Foundation exists with a goal of finding improvements to how we make trusted public decisions – democratic decisions – which represent the informed general will of the people. To do so, we seek to run practical projects in controversial areas of low public trust and where genuine public discourse is impossible as the topic...
Sydney Morning Herald | Comment | May 19, 2016. The great divide between the parties is no longer so great. The punters are considering their bets, with the odds narrowing: not that much between the protagonists. You might end up voting for whoever you hate less. The politicians seem more concerned with their careers than us,...
In Australia, it took the best part of a century for Labor to prove itself. It was up to Bob Hawke and Paul Keating to demonstrate, decisively, that Labor could prosecute responsible government. We could hardly believe it. The socialists crafted a free enterprise platform for a sustained period of economic growth: floating the dollar,...Continue reading
“The fundamental proposition of a citizens’ jury is that, when given a clear remit, adequate time and unfettered access to information, a group of representative citizens are capable of arriving at a sensible position that broadly reflects the views of the wider population,” the report argues. “Neutrality of information is critical to success. This means...Continue reading
Like many local government areas in NSW and across the country, Eurobodalla Shire Council faces the challenge of having significant infrastructure to manage, maintain and renew as well as having an enormous breadth of services to deliver. Coupled with finite income sources; a geographically, socially and economically diverse community; and a level of existing community...Continue reading
The City of Greater Bendigo has a large urban area home to around 85% of the local government area’s population; in turn this is surrounded by an array of rural areas and small towns. In most circumstances this pattern generally leads to a sense that the centre “gets everything” at the expense of the outer areas. We had no...Continue reading
From Sydney Morning Herald. April 18, 2016. Legislatures, and the elections that populate them, have so many flaws that we might be better off picking our representatives at random. Before you chuckle, first consider how far we in the US have come since April 1776, when John Adams wrote that a legislature should be “in miniature,...