4th May 2017 Function Room, Theo Notaras Multicultural Centre, 180 London Circuit, City

Canberra Conversations 1 CITIZENS’ JURIES: THE ANSWER TO IMPROVING COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT IN THE ACT?

Community engagement and participation in decision making has become a challenge for all democratic governments. Citizens’ juries, community panels and other forms of deliberative democracy are becoming increasingly popular across Australia. Are these forms of participatory engagement the answer to community discontent in the ACT?

This Institute for Governance and Policy Analysis (IGPA) Canberra Conversation Panel Discussion will consider the use of deliberative democracy processes from the perspectives of a government sponsor, a researcher and a practitioner. They will draw on their extensive experience to reflect on the benefits of these processes, what situations they are best suited to, and how they can go wrong. The panel will go on to discuss how deliberative democracy processes like citizens’ juries might be used in the ACT.

The event is jointly convened by Professorial Fellow AO and Adjunct Professor Dr Khalid Ahmed PSM in partnership with Deliberators without Borders, who provided funding support, and the International Association for Public Participation (IAP2) ACT Network. It will be in the form of a panel discussion facilitated by Kirsten Lawson and Jon Stanhope.

Canberra Conversations 2 John Stanhope: The , and in that role that I’m pleased to be associated with, The Canberra Conversation is a series of seminars which the Institute is pleased to support. It would bring what we think are issues of interest to Canberra. I share this is a role with adjunct professor Khaled Ahmed.

The topic as you know, today’s conversation is ‘Citizens Juries: The answer to improving community engagement in the ACT?’ Before introducing the panel today, I’d like to take this opportunity by acknowledging that we’re meeting on the land of Ngunnawal peoples. I would like to begin by paying respects, and I acknowledge the continuing contribution which Aboriginal people make in the life of our community.

We are very privileged today to have a panel of people who are very experienced with the issue of community engagement, particularly in deliberative democracy with an experience in specific issue of citizen’s juries. Gail Failamb is the Director of Participation and Partnerships in the Department of Premier and Cabinet in South Australia. She is responsible for fostering an inclusive approach to policy-making, programme development and service delivery across the South Australian government. This includes the strategic implementation of the SA Government’s engagement policy: Better Together and oversight of YourSAy, a centralised online consultation hub for government and associated social media.

Dr. Simon Niemeyer, a colleague from the university of Canberra, is an Australian Research Council Future Fellow at the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance. His research covers the broad fields of deliberative democracy and environmental governance, particularly in respect to climate change. His focus is on the forces that shape public opinion and how this can be improved so that the expressed preference of the public better reflects their collective long-term interests.

Emily Jenke is the Co-CEO of Democracy Co, an Adelaide-based company specialising in participative and deliberative practise. Democracy Co specialises in 3 key areas – supporting public servants with their adoption of these processes (including the politics that comes with this work); enabling stakeholders and partners to participate fully; as well as designing, facilitating and supporting citizens to contribute at their best.

Our facilitator today is Kirsten Lawson, a woman that needs no introduction. I am sure she is well known to each of you. She leads Fairfax Media’s coverage of ACT politics. Kirsten is a long-time political reporter, she returned to the ACT parliament in early 2014, having covered ACT politics in the late 1990s, a time I am sure of few of you can still remember well. During the days of Kate Carnell’s chief minister ship, and federal politics in the Howard era. I’m joining the panel in a sort of fashion as ex-politician. Something that I know probably from time to time, I have failed some of your expectations in relation to consultation and

Canberra Conversations 3 engagement. Be aware that I expose myself to future questions, in relation to some of the policies. Having said that I am aware about the cynicism in the Canberra and broader Australian community in relation to mutual trust, politics, and critical process in government of the extinguished politicians and governments to engage and to reflect.

I think it’s a complex issue having experienced it in 10 years as chief minister. I always carry with me feeling or concern, that despite our best efforts as politicians and as governance and the determination or willingness and the wish to engage, but we never seem to satisfy our constituencies that we have done the job, or done our parts. This issue, whose time has come, an issue that should how do we as communities come together to discuss as a community to discuss the issues. I thank you very much for coming today.

Kirsten Lawson: [crosstalk 00:05:24]

I think we are going to give each of the panelists some time before I ask the questions. You can come up here, it might be easier. [crosstalk 00:05:41] Five minutes for each of the panelists, then some questions.

Gail Fairlamb: Thank you very much for having me. Beautiful day in Canberra. When I first came to this country, I landed in Canberra so it’s kind of like coming home. I appreciate being here today.

So, in my role as the Director of Strategic Engagement in South Australia in the Premier’s department. I’m responsible for the Reforming Democracy Policy. And that policy really came about in 2015. It is commitment lead by our Premier and holds the government to being more open to bringing community views and perspectives into, essentially, government decision-making.

And the policy was co-designed by the Premier’s office and I think it represents a fairly ambitious and potentially courageous attempt to make systemic change across the public service. Opening government, involving people in decisions, but also involving people in the creation of new public value.

So why are we doing this? Well, you know that across the world, we’ve seen trust in politicians, trust in government, trust in public servants, trust in the media, trust in all around civic institutions, declining. And why is that? I think that’s a really burning question. That’s not the question I’m going to answer here now. But it is a question that I think we can move, use things like deliberative democracy and open government to try and mediate some of the trust that is perhaps declining.

So, Reforming Democracy trials a number of open innovation, open democratic innovations, and they build from them the principles which is our guide to community engagement. And I encourage you to hop online and have a look at those.

Canberra Conversations 4 And deliberative democracy is one part of that policy and it’s a really important, part but it’s only, if you like, the flagship part of it.

What’s also important for us is the public service in South Australia is to build capacity in the system. So it is all about public servants. So, when public servants engage the community, they are skilled, they understand, and do something about what they hear from communities.

So, we have a number of different things that are covered by that part of that policy that include deliberative methods like citizens juries, like people’s budgeting where we put an amount of funding out and the community decides on how that should be allocated.

They also have direct democracy like the YourSAy website where 60 000 people have signed up to participate in government decision making and all government agencies are required to host their engagements there.

Country Cabinet where we take politicians out into regional areas to talk with communities. And we’re also doing open innovation challenges. We are bringing the community with platform that would enable open innovations, challenges to solve problems, and to generate new value for our community.

So it’s really important to say that deliberative democracy is one part of that policy, it’s a very important part of it. And deliberative democracy and the Reforming Democracy Policy is an acknowledgement by the South Australian government that we need to be more open. We need to be more open about bringing people into decision-making, and the reason we need to do that is some of the problems we are solving are really complex. They’re difficult. They’re not easy to solve. If they were easy, we would have solved it already.

So sharing that comes space with communities helps build empathy from the community about what government has to do, and also helps government understand what the community needs to do. And deliberative democracy is about taking community sentiments, which, you look across all social media platforms, you can get the sentiment that’s here, and sentiments there. When there aren’t engagement, we just consult in a very normal consultation way, you can get a broad range of sentiment, it doesn’t help government decide what the community would do if they have access to the information if they were given the opportunity to deliberate—the time, the space, access to the expert—that’s what deliberative democracy is about. It’s about the everyday citizen coming into a place where they are supported to give some policy advice to government.

And citizens juries are one way that you can do that. And in South Australia we have done five citizens juries so far. I think I am probably running out of time, no?

Canberra Conversations 5 So in Adelaide, sharing the road safely, dog and cat management and two juries on the nuclear cycle. There are a range of benefits and you probably leave those from the panel discussion. But I would like to conclude by saying that citizens juries, the high-profile, obvious example of deliberative democracy and with this you build the capacity of the public service and the capacity of the community to have that conversation. Simple initiatives like citizens juries are not going to challenge the system. Thank you very much.

Emily Jenke: My name is Emily Jenke, from DemocracyCo. Also IT, thanks for the opportunity to come and chat to you today.

I’m a facilitator so I’m not great at standing and talking at people and I thought I’ll do a little pop quiz with you before we start. I’ll spend a minute of my five minutes.

What I would like you to do is to either stand up or hands up if you’ve been engaged by government on an issue that matters to you. Stand up or hands up! I prefer standing up. Come on! Exercise [crosstalk 00:12:52]

Remain standing if you have had the opportunity to truly deliberate with people that think differently to you on an issue. Remain standing if you had the opportunity. And remain standing if you know how you influenced a decision. Great. Thank you.

Case in point.

I just wanted to get you thinking about how well you’ve been engaged. And what we try and do citizens juries is to take it up a little. So instead of coming up to citizens or to the public or the population with an answer, and say this is what we think we should do. We’re actually getting the population to explore the question or the dilemma. So that’s a really big difference to, you know, normal community engagement.

I want to spend my last three minutes just giving you a little bit of an overview of what a jury entails and then you can ask questions as we go through. But I’ll just give you a little snapshot of what a jury actually is. And there are whole heap of variables here.

So a citizens jury has an element of a random selection element. So the participants are chosen randomly. Many ways that we can do that. The most random way that we use in South Australia is through Australian Post to the household, just to a database of 25,000 or 5,000 across the state or in the metropolitan areas so wherever there’s a relevance to the topic. That randomly selected group matches the population. So generally, we use census data to help us do that. And so, in South Australia we’ve got 80 percent metropolitan, 20 percent regional. About 50 male, female, and in different ages that match the census data. Some pretty simple metrics to get that randomness.

Canberra Conversations 6 The jury come together and one of the first pieces of work is to say, to explore the topic. And the way they do that is by spending some time together, clarifying the topic, and then they start to call witnesses and get evidence. So this is significant sort of evidence-based section of jury, and again, the ways they can do that varies through issue to issue. A really pure model is about the citizens choosing those witnesses themselves, those people they trust.

We then, people like me, facilitators, support them through deliberation and that is about analysing the evidence and also testing it, what that means. So as they start to form recommendations they’re asking questions like, “What does this mean? If we take this course of action, what happens here? What are the trade-offs or consequences of certain decisions?” And as I start to unpack that, it starts to become clear to them that, you know, that what you’re nuancing is really important. So that’s what we found to happen in deliberation.

I can talk to you a bit about some work that another company like ours is doing in Melbourne is doing critical thinking skills to support juries to understand information. It’s really cool. We used it in Nuclear. Then we go through sometimes a number of consensus-building activities that get the jury to go, “Yes, these are our suite of recommendations.” A jury, if there is a strongly held view that most of the jury doesn’t report we have the option of producing a minority reports which is an expression of, “most of us agreed on this, some of us didn’t.” A fundamental thing is juries produce their own work. It’s not touched by anyone else. And when you see some of the reports that we’ve done, some juries would say that, they’re pretty raw, they’re pretty sort of, in some cases rushed.

So that’s sort of the big chunks of what happens in a jury and I’m really happy to answer any questions, and talk a little bit more or reinforced some of those benefits. But from a practitioner’s point of view, it is a hugely exciting processes to be a part of and what I really love is the opportunity to help jurors discover things on a topic and also discover their power and potential in a democracy. So talk to you later. Thank you.

Kirsten Lawson: Simon now, five minutes.

Simon Niemeyer: Testing, testing. Five minutes. Let’s see if we can do this. We were given a script to stick to as guide about what I will discuss in five minutes in terms of my connection with deliberative democracy and citizens juries, pros and cons, and then some advice with their city government. A bit more of that stuff towards the end.

In terms of my connection with deliberative democracy and citizens juries, I’m a researcher, an academic, researching this field for roughly 18 years. During which time I’ve analysed in excruciating detail about seventeen, what we call the mini-public’s, not necessarily citizens juries.

Canberra Conversations 7 Citizens juries are actually one particular design if you like, or a range possibilities that might operate in this space. And some of them have been experimental, some of them are commissioned, some of them are large-scale, some of them are small-scale. My smallest is 12 people and it is still my favourite until this day because it was my PhD case study. It was really valuable to actually spend a lot of extensive time with the participants and get to know them in great detail. When you go the other extreme, when we can have 200 people, 300 people, sometimes a thousand individuals. The biggest that I have been involved in is 200. It’s very different dynamics. There are interesting time considerations there.

My research has been dealing with understanding deliberation and what it looks like, what happens during the process by surveys, talking to individuals, and trying to understand what happens? What does this do? And how can we best design and achieve something what we might call deliberation? And I really want to get into, what we might call deliberation but hopefully that is something that will emerge in the discussion and have a bit about that and open conversation.

But it’s not just about deliberation itself that’s the focus of the research. The ultimate goal for many of us in this field is to actually find mechanisms to improve the democratic process. This actually brings me into the distinction between what is called deliberative democracy and deliberation in a mini-public like a citizens jury. If this was a discussion about deliberative democracy, I’m probably not the person that should be standing here. We actually have in the room, the main, sort of protagonist, or the theorist of this field, John Dryzek. Stand up, John.

Those who talk about deliberative democracy and global governance as governance philosophy, if you like. And that’s a different but a very strongly overlapping concept to the idea of a mini-public. And it’s worth making that distinction. But there are very interesting connections between the two.

So [what are] mini-publics? They are a very powerful innovation because they are the one space you can design for and might yield to what we might call deliberative democracy. Any ideal of deliberative democracy is fully inclusive, we are actually including everyone who is possibly affected by the decision. What we do is we try to understand the dynamics of deliberation. How we might design a deliberative system, if you like, or a democratic system to actually achieve a sort-of ideals that many people identify with. The really interesting work we do is how intuitive sort of ideals of deliberation are to most members of the public. So we’re trying to find ways to scale up deliberation and to harness these sorts of processes to see how it might improve the process of politics in general. And it’s a very exciting field to be in, very exciting democratic process, to engage with members of the public, seeing what happens and what doesn’t happen, and what goes wrong sometimes, and understand that dynamic. We’re just getting to the stage where we really start saying sensible things about how to design this process to achieve something what we might call deliberation. And it’s very exciting to be involved in this research right now.

Canberra Conversations 8 So in terms of specific benefits, you know, this, potentially, this field is an answer to the very problem we see with politics and to understand, what we call in our field the disaffection with parliamentary politics. When you think about the design of the political system, the democratic system as it stands, it was conceived in the horse and buggy era. So it is an interesting question, about whether it is an appropriate design in the present context.

And in fact, the original idea for mini-public’s, which is called mini-populous by political theorist Robert Dahl [just to demonstrate that academics are not completely useless] this was an academic who came up with the concept in the first place. This is actually a response to this very deficit in the design of what we might understand as the democracy or the democratic process. And there are problems with the original design but its intent to design innovation to prove that it exists. And that’s something we can think about. Certainly we have a democratic process but there are ways that we can improve it. And this is potentially one of the ways we can improve this.

My time is finished? Maybe I will actually give my advice to the ACT government. I would say, just very quickly, there are real benefits to this process because deliberative democracy, ideally, is a process of actually making decisions on the basis of reasons. But reasons in this context aren’t just simply, sort-of scientific, logical reasons. There are also reasons that are actually employing in the wisdom public, if you like.

The example is that of climate change. Scientists demonstrated that climate change is a real phenomenon. But that’s not, in itself, enough logic to do sanction. It’s actually the public who ultimately decides whether this is something we do something about. That is the basis of our beliefs and values, and what were their aspirations are. When you think it through, it’s very unlikely when the consequences of that are thought through, that there will be rejection of action, potentially, in my perspective. But they should have the opportunity to at least have that sort of input and part the conversation we’ve had had on this space hasn’t engaged the issue that way.

Deliberative democracy and potential mini-public’s are opportunity to really engage fully by the public and find ways to actually improve the whole process of politics and democracy. Thank you.

Kirsten Lawson: Thank you, panelists. Our time is tight, and we want some questions from the audience. I wonder if I could start by picking up on your issue of climate change. I thought we could go through some of the topical, and the decisions that are being made here in ACT. To test out this idea, which ones we might put to a citizens jury. It strikes me that climate change is one that would lift meaning. A government that wanted a climate change result, would put to a citizens jury. Because that is a result, it strikes me, you would get. I can’t mention the government of the opposite persuasion, putting that kind of question to a citizens jury. Which is the question I had about citizens juries.

Canberra Conversations 9 To what extent do we put the questions that we want the answers to, and to what extent do we have a question where we know the answers that we want to go our way. Same sex marriage strikes me as an issue that would go well with the proponents in a citizens jury. Those who are opposed to it wouldn’t go near it in a citizens jury. Just because of the deliberate process. Perhaps Simon could address that.

Simon Niemeyer: Thank you, that’s a great question. It does lead me to some of the advice, that section of the talk. Climate change is a very interesting question. As it turns out, we had a case study where we did bring a citizens panel on issues of climate change adaptation in the ACT. It was in 2009 and the idea was to engage with the ACT government and feed through some of the results. There were some hesitations. This is a very big, complex issue and even though we have this certain dynamics in climate change, I’m not sure how well that will inform policy and so. I can bring that in a little bit later on, there are some interesting questions in there.

But the last point that you made in terms of establishing something like citizens jury to answer a pre-defined question is definitely a very bad way to conceive of these sorts of initiatives. Because it doesn’t even capture the power what they can do. So, if you establish a citizens jury with a view to legitimising a decision that you’ve already made, first of all, the optics will not be very good. In some respects, the Julia Gillard proposal for a citizens assembly on the carbon tax is a really good example. If you’re going to run on a process on question like that, you would do it much earlier when you’re developing the policy. And one reason for doing that is the power of these things is not to actually, necessarily confirm or deny a particular outcome. They are very good at coming up with integrative solutions potentially as well, to actually change the politics of the issue.

That’s right, that is often where the politics should be. Because often decisions are made in situations where citizens are speculators, or policy anchors. Their worlds don’t collide very much.

Kirsten Lawson: Your answer, is the ideal answer. This is the way they ought to work. But the fact is, I wonder, Gail, whether there is a way, with the way government set them up, how realistic is it to expect a government to not have an outcome in mind? Or at least an energy in mind when they frame the question?

Gail Fairlamb: I think certainly, in the two juries that I’ve run, the first one was about how we can keep people safe at night when they are out at night in the city but also stimulate the night time economy, and second ones about cycling and sharing the road. I think for both of those juries, the government was open to what the outcome was. It wasn’t a yes/no answer. It was to get a raft of solutions that came out from the community perspective that were informed by communities’ experience that would be acceptable to the community.

Canberra Conversations 10 Juries shouldn’t really be put in the place- The power of the jury is to come up with a really creative response that perhaps cuts through some of the positioning and lobbyists and politics involved, and some of the heat involved in the particular issue. And I think it creates a set of recommendations that the government can say, “Well, if the community was able to look at this issue in depth, this is what they will find acceptable.” So, in both of those juries the government went out to talk about issues that were polarising the community. Cyclists wanted more, car drivers wanted more. The jury enables people to sustain their individual person position, and become citizens and they look at it from a much broader perspective, and therefore come up with a range of solutions. I don’t think juries should be placed with yes/no answers necessarily.

Kirsten Lawson: The jury process can also be, to an extent, stacked—perhaps it’s too strong a word, and perhaps Emily can answer this question. I understand that you’re- that pets should be de- sexed. Of course we already have a jury with the scientists. Looking for randomness in selection but also a balance of yes/no views in the panelists. Tell me how you avoid how the issue being stacked by framing of the question, the panel being stacked by the makeup of the panelists, and the outcome being stacked by the information that’s been presented to the jurists from a bureaucracy that works for a government.

Emily Jenke: Yes. There are a number of checks and balances that we put in place, effectively. And probably the first one is about the random selection. I suppose the criteria that we use to select. With the dog and cat example, there were criteria we used. People who own dogs and cats are quite passionate about their dogs and cats. And have a particular perspective. We were wanting to come up with policy that addresses the issue of unwanted pets. And so, what we did in the recruitment is that we asked them, ‘Do you own a dog or a cat?’ And then what we did was randomly selected, so half the jury owned a dog or a cat, half didn’t. So, all of a sudden we had this really powerful dynamic in the room where people were saying to each other ‘tell me about why you feel so passionately about that.’ Or ‘This is what is important to me as a person who doesn’t own dogs or cats.’ So, it’s a much more sort of, it’s a starting point of different perspectives.

And some of the other checks and balances that we put in place as organisers are around witness selection. And that being as transparent and as handed over to the jury as possible. In some cases, it varies depending on topic. With the cycling jury, we started with the opening session of the jury, we had with us the head of emergency services of the Royal Allied hospital. And he showed them some examples of what he encounters everyday then talked to the problem of safety on roads. And so that is curated by us, and sometimes we do that, to just give them some powerful experiences across different perspectives. But then, the jury have the whole day to spend with experts of their choice. Techniques like that. There are multiple ways that we try and get perspective.

Canberra Conversations 11 The newest thing that we’re doing is when the jury walks in the room, we’re talking about unconscious bias, and we’re helping them recognise that they come with that. And this tool that Mosaic Lab has developed around critical thinking skills is actually helping them go, ‘Am I thinking about this objectively? Am I using my perspective, and is my experience really clouding my ability to listen openly and actively deliberate with other citizens?’ And so that as a facilitation tool is, it’s hugely powerful. So what happens in the room, to sort of check them on their own behaviour, is really important.

Kirsten Lawson: Yes, thank you. Something to add there?

Gail Fairlamb: Yeah, I do. I think our first jury was on the same kind of- because we’re conscious that people in the broader community and the media and other policymakers, decision makers would be concerned that there was some kind of bias coming from the government. That the first jury was almost taken to be extremely cautious in keeping an arm’s length. So, they were only allowed two bureaucrats in the room and they weren’t allowed to talk to the jury at all. It was the jury only calling its own witnesses, the facilitation, the jury selection, all separate from government and I think that was a very powerful and important statement for us to make.

The juries are independent process. I don’t get to influence and politicians don’t get to influence what the jury comes up with. The problem that happens as a consequence of that jury was that it was so arm’s length that key stakeholders, the jury didn’t know what it didn’t know, and didn’t know at all the key stakeholders. So pieces of information, and key people weren’t called.

From my perspective, I came in halfway through that jury and I will gifted with the recommendations. I had to go share them out across a range of government agencies. And those government agencies haven’t been engaged in the process in a deep and meaningful way. And therefore, when I came along with the recommendations, well let’s just say that I’ve chewed up a lot of political capital and I used to leverage a lot my relationships.

And so, as a consequence, what we do now is we set up a reference group that tracks alongside the jury. It doesn’t influence the jury, but it makes sure, it makes sure that they’re getting the right information. Those reference groups are from opposite sides of the hallway, if you like. So there is the ROA and the trucking association. And cycling, and billet foundation. So, we, if you’d like, Emily and I are carriers of the true and genuine process. There may be those who have pretty formed views on what the jury should and shouldn’t say. Our role as engagement practitioners, both in and out of government, is to make sure that the process has integrity. Ultimately, we’re about building trust in this process, not with determining a particular outcome.

Kirsten Lawson: I think someone wants to answer before we go.

Canberra Conversations 12 Simon Niemeyer: I have a great quote from one of the participants on the first citizen jury I was involved, which is a research exercise, effectively. I was worried that citizens wouldn’t be that engaged in the process, and this is in North Queensland. ‘It’s so good to be part of one of these processes before politicians get hold of them.’

This is a bit of a shameless self-promotion in the research space, it is possible, the research is saying that there is a minimum requirement before achieving what we might call deliberation. And if we do, in some respects the design is less important because once you change the dynamics of the way citizens engage with these issues, they can re-question, it sort of inoculates them against the issues we were talking about. So you need some minimum requirements.

Kirsten Lawson: To legislate for a referendum. The fear goes into the ACT. At that point the idea of referendum is still a thing of the right. My thought is, I wondered if juries, the consequent left of politic side. Is this a left idea of where politics is going, to fix the problem, which is actually within our environment. I wonder whether Simon can respond to that, and I wonder if John might tell us what he might have been moved to hold a citizens jury on because I know that he did oppose [inaudible 00:39:59] on the literal side of politics to influence with referendums.

Simon Niemeyer: I am really hesitant to getting to any categorization of this being left or right. I mean the way I would characterise this is this is a way we are approaching politics in terms of engaging reasons. Sitting back, and I don’t mean this in the scientific sense, and often you do get outcomes that might be characterised as more progressive. But that’s not always the case. Sometimes, there is manipulation by politics by actors that we left, as well. And these sort of inoculate against that. And not just manipulation on the right. I think it really does transcend that sort of dynamic.

Kirsten Lawson: I heard from john that if he did get his referendum up that the first thing would have been a referendum about abortion. Would that have been as vigorously by the left as it would have been by the right?

John Stanhope: I must [inaudible 00:41:26] this is where-

I think we’ve been playing host , as of referendum on the context of the standard response that we have a strong democracy. We are, as john said, for four years and it’s elected representative that represent the will of the people across state lines on the argument we used state lines.

On issue- is that one of the first things we did when we won the government in 2001 is to do pro-abortion. It’s an interesting point in the context of this conversation around citizen

Canberra Conversations 13 juries is that some of the issue perhaps with community with greater involvement, and perhaps a greater say in the decision in relation to the controversial issues. It is a clear line in the community, on say, abortion.

Kirsten Lawson: Everyone’s mind is already made up.

John Stanhope: Not only was our mind made up, we in 2001 election when we gained government, we campaigned on the issue of decriminalisation of abortion. We campaigned on the issue of removal of discrimination against gays or lesbians. You have never even seen a piece of legislation in the ACT. With the consequence we could actually remove discrimination’s against gays and lesbians and give them the right to adopt to children and we would actually move to ensure that the relationship of gays and lesbians were fully recognised by the community.

I think that was probably in the context of the amount of hate mail I have received the standing issue is that a child is closely involved and used to, in relation to indifference. Was my support for the removal of things against gays and lesbians.

And while we campaigned on that, we extended the mandate. We were going to do that irrespective of the outcomes of the consultation. But where I think we filed, it would mean, in a range of issues where our wish had been able to engage the community more closely or engage the community on the controversial issues the community was placed to find, is where I think it was perhaps citizens juries are important forms of deliberative democracy and community involvement.

It concerns me still that there are issues with the government they just decided a policy position with the community provides, the policy hasn’t brought the community together. In other words those point of view.

And what do we do in relation to issues of principle to like, and this you know, for me cause I campaign, these were fundamental and why I went into the business with an agenda.

But having said that, I am concerned with a range of issues.

Kirsten Lawson: You are not the government anymore.

John Stanhope: We are not, no. And I recognise it at the time with what to do and I’m interested that there are thinkers thinking about how governance can do this.

[crosstalk 00:45:21] The government has a very clear mandate and on what issue which is betraying. It’s quite clear, there a large segment of the community doesn’t understand the

Canberra Conversations 14 implications of the trim. And I think it’s another example of the way the government might have engaged the people. So if those who oppose it, I don’t really agree.

Kirsten Lawson: I’ll need to interrupt you on that very briefly. That brings me to my final question that I want to put to panel, which is some of the issues, the trams is one and perhaps if you have chance to say about it there. The other big issue is we face here, we are looking at if we should have a convention centre, a new stadium, a new theatre, and a new hospital, desperately needed. And we also have the second project in the North which John refers to. These are kinds of things that you consider one question, or five questions for five simple juries to the citizen juries or that question if really for the government and John feel free to interrupt. This question is for all the panelist. And this is the question for the jury.

Gail Fairlamb: I think the- we have experienced in, similar experiences, in South Australia so it’s not unique. But the power in this kind of approach is not quite an easy way to potentially manage the politics but that’s not why they exist.

They exist to bring the community into policy making. And give them an active role in that. And you know there are not many topics where a group of randomly selected citizen would seek for 40, 60, 80 or hundred hours, deeply thinking and discussing a problem or an opportunity.

And I just want to make that point that well, there might be these colloquial things, this is actually about better outcomes and better policy making, better citizenship. And it’s sort of that doing things to citizens. It’s actually about them stepping up and saying, ‘I’ve got something to offer.’ And so in all of those decisions, whether they are ideas, it’s about how you frame the question and how far you let the jury wander through it. The Australian Capital Territory has got some economic pressure, we are thinking of building a new hospital. Are the things that we should be doing right now. That’s the kind of question to be asking a jury as opposed to ‘Should we have a new stadium or not?’

John Stanhope: I would just want to say one thing. I think the point that she was getting at is to what extent would you decide, well, we can have a light rail, or we can have a new stadium, a convention centre, and a new hospital, but you can’t have all. Is that a legitimate citizen jury question?

Simon Niemeyer: My sure answer is that this is legitimate. There are places where, Brazil is an example where they run processes called participatory budgeting. Where citizens actually participate in where money should be spent. It’s a recognition of the fact that it’s more than managing budgeting, but a budget is a reflection of community values and where their priorities are, and deliberation is a very appropriate form of these questions because, where you get in politics, it tends to particular into narrow parts in the public domain.

Canberra Conversations 15 And this is a very unique example and a possibility for rejecting the demands of citizens into the future. Yes, we may have immediate priority, but there may be an argument where we do the new hospital, but actually 20, 30 years down the line the implications of this all economic activity and the ability to function, but possibly engage with this in consideration, citizens jury can do that.

Kirsten Lawson: Sounds very cool.

Gail Fairlamb: I was gonna say that based on the choices of the deliberative process by calling it people’s budgeting now, and we are using it. Can you hear me? So we’re using in South Australia, we devoted an online tool which actually enables the whole community to be involved in this kind of thing in a deliberative way.

If you want me to answer those kinds of questions and see what the community chooses for one thing over the other, I’m gonna design a process specifically to look at what I want to investigate so it might have an online component, it might have a deep face to face, or I might probably integrate the two because I think you need deep dive but you also need to get or to involve at scale because otherwise they will not feel included.

Kirsten Lawson: I apologise for cutting in, we are running out of time but I have some questions from the audience.

Audience 1: Thank you very much my name is [51:11] and I am a member of the Canberra Alliance for Participatory Democracy.

You raise the issue of that the integrity of the processes is paramount. I’m interested in the South Australian experience and whether there is now a broader discussion of [51:39] of the whole community about the value that the citizens juries can play with the people are starting to trust the process or is it really just a discussion between the government and the big people involved in the jury.

Emily Jenke: Yes, much more sophisticated and in fact we’re at point now where citizens juries are kind of like yesterday. And we’ll looking for new, better nuanced, and sort of other explorations that fit the data in South Australians to do that and bring that to life in different ways.

So yes, it’s becoming more and more expected by the general population. And forcing businesses like to be all excited and think creatively and also forcing government to being you know, available.

Canberra Conversations 16 Audience 2: I’ve been involved in initiating citizens juries on health issues here in Canberra and a participant in a deliberative democracy process in South Australia. Both of them are effective in various ways.

I’m just wondering whether a process that includes all the and even extending to referendum as a follow-up. And if so, what order would you propose that these events should take place?

Simon Niemeye: I would be interested to hear more about it, maybe afterwards, in what ways they were effective. Of course design is really important. And we need to address what conditions there might be. Sorry, I have forgotten the question now.

Okay the referendum is a very interesting case study and the relation of democracy to the referendum is a very interesting one and tenuous. But there is actually already a design in terms of citizens and issues reviews in Oregon, where there actually a referendum proposal and of course in that context there is actually a referendum.

This is actually, the intention, it was to inject with the aspect of this. Actually run a citizens jury process in national reviewing not with the question should be answered or not, but actually pulling apart and understand the dynamics.

What does this really involve and so on? And you know, the evidence is a bit mixed in terms of success. Partly a function of the broader political dynamics. But what they can do very well, and this is actually relates to the question involving the rest of the public. If there is engagement in the process with the rest of the public, the rest of the public can be engaged with the information provided in a way that they may not, in a way that this form some sort of arguments. There’s still long way to go. We’re still learning how this whole process and connection to politics but there is great potential in it.

Kirsten Lawson: It is 1:30. We have a couple more questions. Two more questions. But it is time.

Audience 3: Hi my name is [55:26] from the ACT government. I would just like to hear a comment on how you talked about citizens juries being representative and wonder how this operated in minority groups in the representation and enable them to participate because it sounds like we need to have a certain level of education and language.

Emily Jenke: Not at all. In fact, our jury last year and someone came up to me because I mentioned stake holders and she’s like, “What is a stake holder?” And I was like, “oh damn.”

Canberra Conversations 17 So we have a random selection which is a very effective in giving all, you know, very good- Refugees and children, a whole bunch of what you would imagine in minority groups, aboriginal people. So the random selection process is effective. Sometimes if the jury walks around the room and goes, “Oh there’s no aboriginal people on this jury. I really think you need them.” So that can actually achieve that in [56:35] if they think it’s important to have. But a random selection is really effective.

Simon Niemeyer: Representation is a very interesting question and I told them I have written a very important paper in academic circles on the argument that this process should be perceived not as demographically represented but discursively represented, which actually means that all the range of arguments are on the table rather than actually of participants?

Emily Jenke: And compliments, in sort of way?

Simon Niemeyer: And while you’re all this process you do get a sense that there is a certain type you never see. That actually accepts the invitation to participate. And when you’re doing your best to engage one. And we’re doing some research in Sweden and Italy that actually provided some evidence that there are types type that you do miss out. It is a little bit about developing technology to fill these gaps and improve the process. But again, we need to think about this question on representation.

Kirsten Lawson: Kirsten Lawson One last question? John do you have a question for me? [inaudible 00:57:43]

John Stanhope: [00:57:50] was the secretary of the partnership committee. In the ACT there are 11 of these. To involve people in creating new public value. Do parliamentary committees have a role in doing exactly the same thing? I was just wondering is the rise of citizens juries mean that parliamentary committees are failing or citizens juries and parliamentary committees have different roles?

Gail Fairlamb: I don’t have innate knowledge on the role of parliamentary committees so I’m not gonna venture there. But I do think they do some amazing work behind the scenes and I think that’s where, if you like, politicians stick away from taking a serial approach. And I think that’s where the parliamentary committee and citizens juries have some similarities. People are there to suspend individual interest and work towards the common benefit to find common ground and to come up with a viable solution. And that involves give and take. And I think that’s probably happening in both of those forms. And I think citizens juries or any part of community engagement negates the need for government to make decisions. Government needs to make decisions of certain things but it also needs to test if that policy is acceptable and represents public good public value for the spend of public dollar.

Canberra Conversations 18 Kirsten Lawson: John are you okay with the response?

John Stanhope: It’s a very quick question and I have to say something that could be better. Its a question on deliberation on parliamentary settings. And the very strong claim is that the ways that [inaudible 00:59:47] that’s where the good work is done. It would be a real shame, in effect we have a really real relation, if we find a way to articulate.

Gail Fairlamb: We had parliamentary committee at Nuclear. At all the Nuclear jury positions.

John Stanhope: I would like to thank everyone, really appreciate it.

I am extremely pleased with the level ease of this subject. This is the largest gathering we have had since we started here. [inaudible 01:00:28] Three years, the extent of which in Canberra, we have engaged in, community.

I just wanted to say before closing that these are monthly events. We are in the imminent stage of organising again for the end of this month. Towards the end of May. Hopefully be on the form and functioning of Canberra. Of planning phase issue. Light rail, to the form and function of our city.

We have determined that in June, probably the last week in June, we will have a panel. Almost certainly economists to critique the ACT level. We are very eager. Very detailed with relation to the federal budget, which traditionally has another budge that is mostly important to Canberra. The ACT budget. So we have this year to give significant attention to detail. In the ACT budget. Economists.

In July we have resolved to have a panel to discuss the question roughly on the war on drugs, something like that.

Thank you very much.

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