CAfSA News no. 8     July 2026

Report of a visit to deliberative democracy groups in the Australian eastern states, May-June 2026, by Peter Martin, CAfSA

1. newDemocracy Foundation (https://www.newdemocracy.com.au/) 27 May, nDF offices, Walsh Bay, Sydney.

Met with Iain Walker and Christine El-Khoury.

Main points:

a) nDF launched v2 of the Handbook on Democracy Beyond Elections at the United Nations in New York on July 14. The publication is now online as a free download (print versions too) from the nDF website at  https://www.un.org/democracyfund/sites/default/files/newdemocracy-undef-handbook.pdf.

Congrats to nDF for this huge vote of confidence by the UN.

b) nDF will have a stall at the ALP National Conference in Adelaide Thurs 23 – Sat 25 July (https://www.laborconference.org.au/). Anyone with an official pass to the Conference visiting is encouraged to visit the nDF exhibit. (However, community groups have to pay $550 for a single pass, so I can’t see many of us on this CAfSA email list actually attending!)

2. The Canberra Alliance for Participatory Democracy (CaPAD) (https://canberra-alliance.org.au/sortition/) 31 May, Lyneham, Canberra

Met with Peter Tait. Main points:

a) CaPAD has a small active core group, and has been running about 10 years.

b) At election time CaPAD organises community events for candidates to talk to public meetings.

c) Between elections CaPAD tries to provide citizens with experience of delib dem

d) CaPAD has created a ‘Genuine Engagement Tool’ (https://canberra-alliance.org.au/activity/, a Word doc on their website) structured around 12 principles to follow when creating and managing a delib dem process.

e) Peter points to the Greens’ ‘Neighbourhood Democracy’ strategy that the party is applying in the ACT, at this stage across 10 local communities, and which considers and delivers policy on local matters. However, membership is by self-selection, with no mention of sortition.

f) The ACT is currently considering enlarging its House of Assembly from the current level of 25 members, and CaPAD is contributing to that discussion.

g) Denis Venning at CaPAD is leading a project that is advocating a standing CA for the ACT. This idea has been fed into the current public discussion on ‘Reimagining Governance for the ACT’, and an event to examine this idea more fully appears planned for November this year. Peter felt that 3 Green MLAs appeared interested in CAs, including Rebecca Vassarotti.

h) Peter recommended the work of Prof Carolyn Hendricks (Crawford School of Public Policy) and Prof Ron Levy (College of Law), ANU.

i) A CA is planned in the ACT next year on voluntary assisted dying (VAD)

j) Tim Hollo, author of ‘Living Democracy: An Ecological Manifesto for the End of the World As We Know It’, lives in Canberra and is active in discussions about local democracy.

k) CaPAD runs the ‘Good Governance and Democracy Hub’ for NENA (New Economy Network Australia) (NENA site needs updating to reflect this)

l) Finally, Peter recommended the work of the Centre for Australia Democracy (CAD), led by Loi Lam. Board members include Tim Hollo, Keith Heggart and Sonia Randhawa. It’s work program appears on its web site www.centreforaustraliandemocracy.org.au. It seems to be a virtual organisation with no office locations other than those of the affiliated Board members.

3. Centre for Deliberative Democracy, Uni of Canberra    Tues 2 June

I had a brief whistle stop here at their morning tea, thanks to ex director John Dryzek. The group is very focused on its graduate program, and is not taking a lead in raising the public or political profile of deliberative democracy at this time. One the Centre’s leading academics, Nicole Curato, is now Professor of Democratic Governance at the University of Birmingham’s School of Government.

4. Sonia Randhawa, Sortition Foundation, Melbourne Monday 8 June

Main points :

a) Sonia thought that Joanne Carlyle, who was with the Better Cities Initiative (as was Elizabeth Farrelly) was involved with the newish Democracy Alliance Australia, not to be confused with the well established Australian Democracy Network (CEO of which is Zaffron Zomer, see https://australiandemocracy.org.au).

b) Jane Morton, with XR in Melbourne, is supportive of delib dem. They are now crowd-funding for a national CA on tax and wealth.

c) Sonia is interested in ‘sociocracy’ and recommends it to us – see https://www.sociocracyforall.org/sociocracy/. She says it works especially well in schools and companies.

d) Sonia recommends ‘Democracy in Practice’ from Bolivia – see the website https://democracyinpractice.org/about/ – the following overview helps get the idea across:

‘Democracy in Practice is a non-profit organization based in Bolivia that experiments with alternative, non-electoral democratic systems. Co-founded by Adam Cronkright and Raúl Olivera, the group is most famous for replacing traditional, popularity-based student elections with random selection (lotteries) in schools’ (Source: Participedia)

e) SF (the Sortition Foundation, for which Sonia works) has been awarded a grant from Google to further develop stratification processes (basic to compiling final assemblies using lot). Sonia has so far trained 3 people in Darwin in how to conduct stratification.

f) Sonia notes the deliberative work of the ‘Australian Centre for Health Engagement, Evidence and Values’ (ACHEEV) at the Uni of Wollongong under Assoc. Professor Chris Degeling

g) She also recommends Eddy Kowalski at ‘Conversation at the Crossroads’, Uni of Melb., and founder of Our Voice – see https://www.itsourvoice.com/

h) Sonia reminds us that during the development of the South Australian Housing and Homelessness Strategy, the state government commissioned the deliberative democracy organisation democracyCo to run delib dem processes. Apparently changes to regulations around prefab housing were one result.

5. Tim Dunlop, author Melbourne Tues 9 June

Tim’s books and substacks have long included advocacy for delib dem – see for example his 2018 book, ‘The Future of Everything’. He also seems to be one of the most thoughtful, insightful and accessible observers writing in Australia at present on how our political system works, and who it works best for.

Main points:

a) Tim reminds us that James Fishkin assisted the Uni of SA with a deliberative poll associated with the republic referendum in 1999, in collaboration with ABC TV. The deliberative process led to dramatic results. Firstly the percentage of people involved in the deliberation saying they had a clear understanding of the issue went from 21% to 83%. Secondly, support amongst them for the republic option went from 57% to 73%. Yet on the day, only 45% of national voters backed the proposal and it was defeated.

Fishkin and others have often since pointed to this outcome as dramatic and classic proof of a common democratic disconnect in modern representative political systems. At the same time the Stanford Deliberative Democracy Lab often cites the inclusion of the ABC TV cover of the process at the time as generating ‘one of the most successful media-backed democratic experiments ever conducted’. Tim did his PhD on deliberative polling around the republic referendum in 1999.

b) We talked about the 2001 Deliberative Poll on Reconciliation in Australia. Wikipedia reports that the percentage of people involved in the deliberation who thought reconciliation was important went from 31% to 63%, again reflecting the power of careful deliberation. However, the closing remarks in the Wiki article are telling. It says, ‘Studying democratic innovations and adapting them to different situations is key to creating a successful representative democracy’.

So even in this careful and sympathetic account, the underlying assumption is that the point of deliberation is to reinforce representative democracy. Other conclusions could be drawn!

c) Tim wrote about the significance of the arrival of the Teal independent politicians in his 2022 book ‘Voices of Us’. He has a new book out in Oct this year, ‘The Culture Wars’, which the publisher (Simon and Schuster) says ‘situates Australia’s culture wars within a longer history, while revealing how they are now energised by market economics, media concentration, social media and global political movements’.

6. Nic Gruen, writer, Melbourne, Tues 9 June

Main points:

a) We noted Peter Garret’s commission of enquiry into Aukus, and wondered if they had considered using delib dem to elevate the quality and representativeness of the views expressed and possible conclusions. (PM has since emailed the commission to suggest this, no response.)

b) Nic recommends the work of Adam Conkrite, especially his original implementation of sortition in student participation and leadership in school management in Bolivia. See https://democracyinpractice.org/. Note that newDemocracy Foundation in NSW is a partner.

c) We discussed the the Cumbria Climate Assembly, a citizens’ panel in Crumbria, UK, of 42 randomly selected local residents that met over six sessions in spring 2025 on regional climate change action. Funded by the National Lottery Community Fund, it produced 17 recommendations for achieving net zero. The process was independently designed and facilitated by Shared Future CIC, a community interest company based in the UK that specialises in deliberative democracy and participatory engagement.

The following 3 links relate:

https://participedia.net/case/the-cumbria-climate-citizens-assembly

Statement from Futureproof Cumbria re the Cumbria Climate Assembly

d) Nic outlined the important historical role in Australia of Grant Rule, who amassed a fortune pioneering the business use of SMS messaging in Australia, and who used the income to set up the McKinnon Foundation. SA ex-Premier Jay Weatherill was briefly an executive there before recently taking up the position of Australia’s High Commissioner to London. Ex-Dep Premier of SA Susan Close has now also joined the McKinnon management team.

However, it remains unclear how interested the Foundation is in supporting efforts in deliberative democracy – a search of the McKinnon web site fails to turn up any mention of that term.

e) Nic has produced a series of 20 excellent and highly accessible short videos (under 5 mins each), ‘Awakening our better angels’, that present his comprehensive world view across a range of issues. In particular, he looks closely at our social and political systems, and champions the use of deliberative democracy as a way of improving the way we govern ourselves. Each video is accompanied by a discussion between Nic and Irish commentator and comedian Colm O’Regan. See the series at https://www.thesharedcentre.com/. These would be excellent conversation starters in student and community groups.

7. Bryn Davies, Castlemaine Institute, Thurs 11 June, Castlemain, Vic

Main points:

a) Bryn works part time for the Castlemaine Institute, which is supportive of his active community work in seeking to apply deliberative processes on a range of local issues. In particular he is trying to establish a ‘community-led citizen assembly’ for the shire, and has some funding support from NED to do that.

b) Bryn’s group, ‘Really Local’, has a web site at https://www.reallylocal.au/

c) He points to the community work of Joel Blackwell in Melbourne through ‘Regen Melbourne’ – see https://regen.melbourne/about. In that website there’s an interesting article by Jon Alexander that appears in ‘Governance Matters Magazine’ of the international consulting group Chandler, and focuses favourably on citizen participation in governance (https://chandlergovernance.com/governancematters/how-citizen-power-can-answer-our-greatest-challenges).

Jon is the author of the excellent book, ‘Citizens: Why the Key to Fixing Everything is All of Us’, (Alexander and Conrad, Canberry Press, 2024) that was highlighted at the ‘Policy without Politicians’ conference in Adelaide last year.

d) Bryn also recommends the activity of Matt Tyler, a public policy manager with the Victorian Government, who runs a program called ‘Folio’ (https://www.folio.org.au/). This brings together people in Melbourne in face-to-face events to discuss a very diverse range of issues. It appears there were fortnightly or monthly events from 2021 to 2025, although only one event appears on the site for 2026. It was clearly conceived in the spirit of open citizen participation and deliberation, although the groups appear to be based on self-selection.

e) Finally, the program ‘Foundations for Tomorrow’ (https://www.foundationsfortomorrow.org/) was recommended, and appears to focus on intergenerational equity issues. An associated group of 20 federal politicians has formed that feeds into the work and supports it. While the term ‘deliberative democracy’ does not appear on its website, there would seem to be potential for the program to make good use of it.

SA STOP PRESS NEWS!

A major new development is SA is the Democracy Innovation Festival scheduled for 17-18 August, and organised by the local DEM-36 group – see https://events.humanitix.com/democracy-innovation-festival-2026. Anyone interested in ways of improving the way we do democracy in SA is encouraged to attend.