Thanks to everyone who joined in last night for ‘Could a ‘Standing Citizen Chamber’ restore trust and resilience?‘, it was a great conversation led by locals Cathy Wheel and Geoff Turner. The event brief prepared by Cathy Wheel can be found here for those of you who missed in and are interested in an overview of the concept.
Here are some resources for those of you wanting to explore the Citizen’s Jury and other forms of deliberative democracy further in Australia:
- Bendigo used it for council’s priorities for the future
- Canberra used it for a specific issue (compulsory third party insurance) in 2017
- Geelong Citizen’s Jury in 2017 for democratic representation to Councils
- VicHealth had a jury on Obesity, supported by newDemocracy Foundation. The consulting group Mosaic Lab also has a case study on their site.
- Vic Local Gov Association has a summary page on Citizen’s Jury
- newDemocracy Foundation prepared a guide on small format deliberative democracy
- Citizens’ Juries in Australia: A Discussion about Protocols (2000) – includes some links at the ends from 1990s era
Here are some examples from abroad
- Jury on farming and food futures in India
- GMOs and the future of farming in Mali, also explored in this short paper
- Berlin Citizen’s Jury on council budgetting (see pages 69-71 of this report from OECD)
- Elections obstruct more than facilitate good governance (website) – Experimental deliberative democracy – G1000 (Belgium)
- How to run a Civic Lottery: Designing fair selection mechanisms for deliberative public processes (guide) – MASS LBP Toronto – Canada’s home for democratic innovation and public strategy
- Citizen’s Jury toolkit (World Bank)
And here is an overview of our census data for those thinking about what any representative group in our area might look like
- Here is a link to the census data for Mt Alex: http://quickstats.censusdata.abs.gov.au/census_services/getproduct/census/2016/quickstat/LGA25430?opendocument
Following the event, a discussion paper was prepared to stimulate conversation amongst local groups interested in improving democracy.
If you have any resources you want to share, or would like to write a piece for this website, please contact Lexi via info@democracy4dinner.org.
Democracy is not a spectator sport 