Bryn Davies
Imagine it is the Tuesday after the state election. The jostling for who will form government continues: filling your feeds, airwaves, newspapers.
Bored of the endless scroll, you drop into your local supermarket and pick up a copy of the Midland Express. As you arrive home, you find an envelope in your letterbox. Formally addressed, it looks like it could be from the government (or someone’s slightly-too-official wedding invitation?). You open it.
“You have been randomly chosen for the Mount Alexander People’s Assembly.”
Then you do what most of us would do: you leave it on the kitchen bench and wonder whether it’s a scam.
That letter doesn’t exist yet. But something very like it will start arriving in letterboxes or emails across Mount Alexander Shire next year.
A people’s assembly is a bit like jury duty, but for community decisions. A lottery picks a bunch of people, and then through careful sampling, 20 to 40 people of these are selected to take part. The final group is designed to reflect the shire as a whole: young and old, renters and home owners, people from across the divide.
They will meet over several sessions on an issue of importance to our community. They will hear from people who know the subject (‘experts on tap, not on top’), and from people affected by it. They will ask hard questions, work through the trade-offs together, and make recommendations. They will be paid for their time.
There are no campaigns and no candidates, and nobody is asking for your vote. Just neighbours, given good information and time to think, working out what’s best for the place we share.
Why talk about this a few weeks before an election? Because elections are very good at deciding who governs, but they are less good at bringing us together to work through tricky issues as a community (in fact, sometimes they can push us further apart). And they don’t give ordinary folk a chance to have a say in between elections.
Assemblies don’t replace elections. But they do add something that is missing in our political system: to allow community members to get involved, consider information and help make a decision.
Around the world, randomly selected groups of citizens have worked through some of the hardest questions in public life. Ireland used them before its referendums on marriage equality and abortion (the recommendations from both passed). In Victoria, councils have used them for budgets and long-term council plans. South Australia has used citizens assemblies to decide where to locate a nuclear waste dump and to revise drinking laws. What these processes showed was that ordinary people, given time and good information, can reach thoughtful, balanced conclusions that people (and politicians) from across the political spectrum can work with.
A group of locals (www.reallylocal.au) are building one in Mount Alexander Shire, with funding from philanthropic foundations, local donations and from the Mount Alexander Shire Council.
What makes this one different from those run elsewhere is that it’s community-led. It isn’t a government consultation. It has been built by locals, with support from local organisations, and it’s open to anyone in the shire. Anyone can get involved to help build it.
Really Local will officially launch the Mount Alexander People’s Assembly next Thursday, November 12, at the Castlemaine Festival for Democracy at The Mill. The day starts at 9.30am with speakers including Zoe Daniel, Kate Lawrence and the newly formed Voices for Bendigo. In the afternoon there are hands-on sessions on the skills democracy needs (listening, disagreeing, reaching consensus). In the evening there’s a Dinner for Democracy, with stories from the day, music, international perspectives and the official launch of the People’s Assembly. You can book for one session, or all.
The festival is non-partisan, and shows that democracy is for everyone. So come along if you’d like to find out what it is all about.
Castlemaine Festival for Democracy tickets and details: www.reallylocal.au
– Bryn Davies is founder of Really Local and government and democracy lead at the Castlemaine Institute