CAfSA News no. 5 July 2025
We hope and trust that you enjoyed the Citizen Assemblies Conference and/or the CAs Workshop at Woodville Town Hall on June 14 and 15, 2025.
From all accounts to date it was a most informative and enlightening weekend, and we hope that it is a forerunner of many good things to come for a better Australia. If you were prevented from attending, this email will hopefully be of interest to you.
On the Saturday we were treated to the full scope of the deliberative engagement vehicle, of which Citizens Assemblies are the gold standard pinnacle form. The presentations by Nick Gruen, David Van Reybrouk, Iain Walker, Emma Fletcher and Jay Weatherill provided the vision splendid, and Uncle Lewis O’Brien, Sonia Randhawa, Simon Birmingham, and Heather Holmes-Ross provided important other perspectives, with the most perceptive Elizabeth Farrelly in the chairing role. There are links to their works below.
On the Sunday we got under the bonnet of the vehicle with democracyCo and the Sortition Foundation. The focus of the weekend was very strongly on citizen assemblies, yet there are many other forms of deliberative engagement which do not require the rigour of sortition selection to give voice to the people.
The essential feature of deliberative engagement is respectful speaking and listening, the provision of accurate and complete information, the opportunity to connect with fellow participants, and the formulation of a collective cooperative decision about the discussion topic.
CAfSA would be pleased to receive any feedback and testimonials about your conference and workshop experiences. Could you please send us something? Thank you!
CAfSA is considering a follow-up meeting to determine next steps to grow deliberative engagement and Citizen Assemblies in Australia and in South Australia. This could be a meeting (or more) in person, on-line or hybrid. Incidentally, there is an actual Citizen Assembly happening in Dubbo, NSW this weekend. See ABC RN website for details.
Some further potential projects might include having focused citizen assemblies on current highly topical issues, publishing guide sheets for essential deliberative processes, strategising for society-wide uptake of deliberative engagement, mitigating for the institutionalisation of citizen assemblies in Australia, and bringing David Van Reybrouk to Australia (including Adelaide) in October 2025.
In the spirit and breadth of the presentations by David Van Reybrouk and Nick Gruen, please take a moment to imagine a citizen assembly of Israelis and Iranians deliberating on the current deadly conflict between their two nations. I believe the outcome would be summed up in one four letter word: STOP! Surely CAs are long overdue.
In conclusion, thank you for coming to the Conference and/or Workshop, thank you to the Nurturing Evolutionary Development (NED) Foundation for its generous financial support, thank you to the volunteers from Extinction Rebellion SA who helped to keep us refreshed and fed, and of course our collective thanks go to the expert speakers who provided the enlightening visions and hope for the future of democracy in Australia and beyond.
Please consider your possible ongoing adoption of deliberative engagement, and we look forward to hearing from/of you.
The CAfSA Team
Links to speakers, sponsor and supporters
Web searches using names and organisations will provide much additional material
The Nurturing Evolutionary Development (NED) Foundation.
David van Reybrouk. Presentation to the Citizen Assemblies Conference on 14 June 2025, with Iain Walker. Click here to view (passcode: XL*LXz=6)
Nick Gruen, Lateral Economics
https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/contributors/articles/nicholas-gruen
Iain Walker, newDemocracy Foundation
https://www.newdemocracy.com.au/
Emma Fletcher and Emily Jenke
https://www.democracyco.com.au/
Jay Weatherill, McKinnon Foundation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GM3QAQii7CE
Elizabeth Farrelly, Better Cities Initiative
https://www.bettercities.org.au/
Sonia Randhawa
https://www.sortitionfoundation.org/
Peter Martin’s recently published overview of CAs
https://www.indailysa.com.au/news/opinion/2025/06/17/restoring-faith-in-democracy-time-for-citizen-assemblies
Emma Fletcher is Co-CEO of Australia’s leading deliberative democracy company – democracyCo. In this role she designs, and project manages large and complex engagement projects.
An award-winning writer, columnist, critic, academic, broadcaster, public intellectual and former political candidate. Dr Elizabeth Farrelly is trained in architecture and philosophy.
Nicholas Gruen, CEO of Lateral Economics is a widely published policy economist, entrepreneur and commentator. He has advised Cabinet Ministers, sat on Australia’s Productivity Commission and founded Lateral Economics and Peach Financial.
