CAfSA News no. 6    Jan 2026

International

In Dec 2022 France began a CA on assisted dying, resulting in 67 recommendations with 92% consensus. This process led to legislative change in May 2025 (see the Guardian article at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/may/27/french-parliament-prepares-to-vote-on-legalising-assisted-dying, although the article fails to mention the CA origins and spadework for this reform!)

…a good video discussion with Jon Alexander (author of the excellent short book ‘Citizen’) hosting Claudia Chwalisz (of Democracy Next) and Katy Rubin is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIUFXnpgnEM

…a great podcast with Claudia Chwalisz (yep, she’s everywhere!) interviewing David Van Reybrouck (who spoke by video at the Adelaide conference), on the topic of how can we build into decision making the idea of the rights of non-human entities (such as ecosystems or geographic entities), is at https://open.spotify.com/show/1HIqSnucya51LYIQfPERqU

…check out the organisation Healthy Democracy at www.healthydemocracy.org, billed on its site as ‘a US-based nonpartisan nonprofit that has been on the forefront the worldwide movement of Civic Assemblies, constructing inclusive deliberative and direct democracy programs for public officials, administrators, and civic advocates since 2007’. There’s a clip at https://cocap.us/homelessness/ of a recent CA held in Deschutes County, Oregan, with heartfelt praise of the process by participants.

…The OECD maintains a large database of examples of deliberative democracy in OECD countries, currently numbering 773 between the years 1996 and 2023, and identified by country. Australia has 75 listed, and almost all are ‘citizen juries’. None are ‘citizen assemblies’. Japan has 166 events listed, almost all ‘planning cells’. Ireland has just six, all citizen assemblies, including two of the most globally celebrated (on abortion, and on gender equality).

Australia

‘The People’s House’ project by democracyCo continues. In this scheme politicians get to have a CA in their own electorate providing insights into issues and priorities raised by local voters. See https://www.democracyco.com.au/the-peoples-house/

The Centre for Deliberative Democracy at the University of Canberra has just published its ‘Guidebook for Deliberative Engagement – key features and practical insights’ by Ercan et al. Available free on the creative commons at https://researchprofiles.canberra.edu.au/en/publications/guidebook-for-deliberative-engagement-key-features-and-practical-/, this is a comprehensive, clear and inspiring account of how we can make deliberative democracy work.

Young Australian academic Luke Kemp has appeared in various media lately, including the ABC’s LNL. In his remarkable new book on the history of societal collapses over the millennia, ‘Goliath’s Curse’, he concludes that sortition-based deliberative democracy offers a lifeline to western democracies like ours that are struggling to make policy and to effect a raft of urgently needed changes in the face of growing inequality, unsustainable growth, unaffordable housing, excessive emissions, climate change, biodiversity collapse and disillusionment with political parties as a basis for government. Thanks Luke – timely support, and on the money!

South Australia

An interesting development in SA at present is the work being done by Dem36, a group of local citizens led by Emeritus Professor of Politics Alan Reid. Keen to see the bicentenary of SA in 2036 marked by reforms, perhaps even constitutional ones, the group is looking to breathe new life and faith into democracy as practised in SA. The state, of course, has a fine record of leading reform in Australia over the last 190 years, indeed globally in some respects, and can do so again.

One of the ideas emerging in discussion around a draft charter the group has prepared is that deliberative democracy and sortition could be considered as a possible future reform in which the Legislative Council is reconstituted as a citizens’ house on the basis of selection by lot for short term service. We trust juries on this basis, so why not an upper house? Evidence from around the world clearly shows that ordinary citizens are very capable of making a valuable contribution to policy and decision making in this way. It would mean that political parties would have no say or place in the upper house, but rather, citizens without vested interests would genuinely deliberate and arrive at decisions by consensus. This is a visionary and entirely feasible reform and well worth serious attention. It may even represent the best way to preserve our democracy in the face of growing state capture