We love connecting with people across the industry, sharing knowledge and supporting learning. So, when we heard that Dr. Brett Hennig (the Sortition Foundation) would be in Melbourne, we jumped at the chance to build an event around his visit. The result was a free Deliberation Innovation & Public Sector Engagement event, which incorporated both an afternoon of deliberation training for government and an evening of engaging conversation.
THE TRAINING (DELIBERATION 101)
The event kicked off with a mini ‘deliberation ready’ session – a value packed three hours of training for participants from across the public sector. The session touched on key principles of deliberative engagement, when to deliberate (and when not to), vital internal steps required to get ready to deliberate and much more. It was great to see state and local government, not for profits and government agencies represented. Participants brought plenty of energy and enthusiasm to what was a very interactive and busy three hours.
“Thank you for the invite and for sharing your wealth and knowledge... that’s time democracy!”
THE CONVERSATION
We all partook in some (very well deserved) networking drinks and delicious antipasto platters before the ‘engaging evening of conversation’ commenced. Guest speaker Brett was joined by Louisa Curry - Senior Adviser Governance Projects at Local Government Victoria and former project manager of the Democracy in Geelong ‘Geelong Citizens Jury’.
The conversation touched on deliberation innovations around the world, including exciting examples of ‘standing’ citizen’s assemblies overseas in places such as Cambridge, Belgium and Madrid. For the first time in modern history, parliaments are creating legislated structures that permanently involve a randomly selected cohort of citizens in democratic decision making.
The guest speakers answered questions around how we could apply these concepts locally, and we explored the strengths and challenges of the Geelong Citizens’ Jury process in more depth. Changing requirements and expectations for engagement in Australia were also touched on, particularly legislative reform such as the Local Government Bill, which proposes a legislated increase to the level of influence communities have over council decisions through deliberative engagement practices. Brett reflected on how important and exciting it would be to possibly have legislation in place that would push governments to move towards deliberative models.
At the end of the night an exhausted yet inspired cohort of attendees reflected on their experience and said they were feeling ‘hopeful’, ‘curious’, ‘reassured’, ‘lucky’ and even ‘radical’! An excellent range of emotions in our view – evidence that we all managed to fit a lot of thinking, learning and discussion into one very short day.
Thank you to everyone who attended and made the session and evening event such a wonderful experience! We hope to put on more free events in 2020 - so stay tuned. Subscribe to the Discussion to be the first to know.