CAPaD is working for the best democracy we can have. This page shows off what we are doing and what we have done previously.
Please explore
Activity
Current CAPaD Activity 
Active Democracy ACT
It’s time for our voices to be heard: Active Democracy wants to change how our federal MPs work with and for us.
Active Democracy ACT is a group of citizens, inspired to work together to make this happen. We welcome others who want to join us to grow this group and help design our new politics.
Even if you can’t join us now, and you want us to be successful, you can help by letting others know about us.
An Active Democracy group has set up in Bean. Information and contact details are here.
People in Canberra and Fenner who want to join in, please click the Join in ... button.
The more people participating together, the stronger we can be.
The Canberra Forum: 'Another way of listening'
CAPaD in collaboration with DemocracyCo and Alicia Payne, ALP member for the ACT federal electorate of Canberra, is proposing in 2022 to hold a series of minipublic events to explore another way of MPs and citizens working together for the public good. The idea is described in this Canberra Times article.
Genuine Engagement Tool for Participatory Processes
The Genuine Engagement Tool (GET) is designed to help any community reflect on their experience of how effectively their government is engaging with them to make wise decisions together for the public good.
It is designed to help communities stimulate their critical thinking by answering key simple questions in 11 categories to review any government engagement process and it is particularly suited to implementing effective citizens assemblies.
By using the tool, communities can get clear insights on how they can keep their own power and agency over what can work better and they can communicate more transparently about how governments can engage better.
You can get an open source copy of the Genuine Engagement Tool for community groups here and you can read the story of how it was developed here.
Please download it, use this, acknowledge the source and feedback to us how you went with using it.
Education Strategy
In 2022 we have developed an Education Strategy to guide our activity. More about this Strategy can be found here.
DemFest 21
A festival celebrating locally driven democracy in Australia.
In 2022 we are holding follow up conversations to continue looking at how we can mend democracy.
Visit the DemFest21 site to view the presentations and watch the videos of the sessions
Education Strategy CAPaD intends to achieve its purpose and mission through implementation of an Education Strategy.
Strategic Outcome Domains
Outcome 1 – government systems
Outcome 2 – influences on democracy
Outcome 3 – harnessing the political system
Outcome 4 – reforming the political system
A copy of the Education Strategy can be found here.
Our current Education Strategy Implementation Plan can be found here.
For all Election related activity, please see our Elections Page.
Previous CAPaD action and achievements - 2015 to 2020 CAPaD focusses on taking action to change politics so people can participate better in decisions.
We work through Action Groups.
Click on an Action Group box below for information on how to become involved.
- Alliance Building: meeting other groups and ACT government people and raising our profile, and additionally through the Citizens Juries and Urban Planning groups’ work.
- Citizens Juries & Mini-Public Evaluation: a series of Hear the Participants events, and connections with government, academia (Canberra University Institute of Governance and Policy Analysis) through the Deliberate ACT community of practice.
- Good Citizens Guide: indirectly, worked with the Frank Fenner Foundation on a basic Understanding and Using Government Effectively Manual.
- Creating the New Story: the Action Group wove this thread into several other action groups’ work.
- Kitchen Table Conversations Community Dialogue Methods: the Group revised the KTC kit and published it on our website.
- MLA Accountability / Relationship: mapped out a plan of action, revised the 2016 candidate statements and as arranged a stall at the Southfest event to open dialogue with people about being represented.
- Resources / Library (good-things-to-read): designed a topic list for our library and continued to collect useful material. This links to revamping the website to make if more accessible.
- Social Change Training: activity here was immersed in the work of other actin groups.
- Urban Planning Participation Working Group: continued informally in conversation with residents’ groups and other community organisations and our involvement in various ACT government consultations such as the Better Cities Engagement.
- ACT 2016 Elections : CAPaD's candidate statements were well-received by the candidates and by the public.
- DemFest 2016: People Power for Democracy : Canberra’s first Festival of Democracy was held over the weekend of 18–19 June 2016 at the University of Canberra.
- Federal 2016 Elections : Completely ignored our requests for candidate statements, indicative of attitudes generally.
Kitchen Table Conversations - how to
Why Kitchen Table Conversations?
CAPaD values the kitchen table conversation (KTC) method as a way to connect Canberrans through community-based, self-managing conversations. We believe that many people hosting and participating in KTCs will help create the pre-conditions for people to desire and be able to join in participatory democracy.
We want to use Kitchen Table Conversations as a way to bring people together to work toward all our objectives.
The primary aims of the KTC method are:
- to connect people
- to give them the chance to listen non-judgementally to what others think about things
- to safely express and develop their own opinions.
CAPaD does not primarily use KTCs as a way of gathering input to Government consultation processes.
We do advocate for other community groups and the ACT government to use community dialogue such as KTCs, but we support them to do that where we feel we can add value.
KTCs can feed into other participatory and deliberative practices.
The KTC Methods Action Group was formed at the start of 2018. It reviewed KTC materials developed and used by other groups (including SEE-Change in the ACT), and developed its own KTC Kit with optional discussion questions.
This was launched in November 2018 and is free for all to use. You can download the CAPaD KTC kit here.
Go ahead and develop new discussion topics and modify the process however you wish, and use it for any small-group discussion.
CAPaD would love to hear about your experiences and any feedback you might have. Please contact by emailing the Secretary.
What’s in the kit?
- 1. Summary of the KTC process
- 2. Why CAPaD recommends Kitchen Table Conversations
- 3. How the process works
- 4. The courage to host
- 5. Conversation agreements
- 6. Role of the Host
- 7. Role of the Scribe
- Attachment A: Conversation guide A: Democracy in the ACT
- Attachment B: Conversation guide B: What’s important to you? (ACT-region focus)
- Attachment C: Conversation guide C: Choose your own topic
- Attachment D: Sample invitation
CAPaD in the media Opinion, comment and Letters to the Editor
2022
May 2022 2XX Behind the lines: Saffron Zomer (Australian Democracy Network) and Peter Tait (CAPaD) on democracy and the 2022 election. Audio. minutes.
March 2022 2XX Behind the lines: Peter Tait talking about CAPaD, Active Democracy Australia and making democracy work this election. Audio file. 56 minutes.
2020 September October
October 16 Article in the RiotACT by Genevieve Jacobs: What do all those candidates really believe? Here’s how to find out
October 8 City News, Peter Tait Getting the Canberra we want to live in. Why invite candidates to tell us about themselves?
October 6 Canberra Times front page advertisement for the candidate statement.
September 17-23 City News Advertorial on our election program.
2020 May: ACT Media coverage: letters to editors about our candidate statement exercise in a letter published in the Canberra Times in mid-May and the City News in late May.
2019 Dec: See our piece in ACTCOSS journal about CAPaD's thoughts on more accountable representation.
2019 Nov: Rebecca Vassarotti reports on our MLA interviews report, Exploring political representation in the ACT, piece in RiotACT.
2019 Oct: City News, Peter Tait’s Neat summary of CAPaD’s position on ideas to change ACT democracy.
Media stories
October 2: Peter Tait interviewed on 2XX, updating voters on the election and candidate statements, democracy, and lots more.
2020 August Peter Tait was interviewed on 2XX on Friday 28th August about democracy, our upcoming election, the candidate statements and more. Hear the wide ranging interview at this link.
2020 May Peter Tait was interviewed as part of an ABC piece, Amid a coronavirus pandemic, ACT election candidates are preparing for a very different campaign. “The alliance hopes this year's campaign will force candidates to use such options {candidate statements} to connect with voters. And Dr Tait says that, with the usual campaign tactics suspended and politics out of peoples' faces, voters may turn to candidates' statements to figure out where their vote should fall.”
Blogs
March 2020: We have explained our broad 2020 Election strategy in Awakening Democracy by Robust Representation in John Menadue’s Pearls and Irritations and a copy is in our website.
Awakening Democracy - CAPaD Newsletters
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CAPaD General Meeting and Zoom Event Materials
July 2020, 17th. The Genuine Engagement Tool.
In this 17 minute video Mark Spain outlines and explains the Genuine Engagement Tool that CAPaD has developed from our experiences observing citizen juries in action over the past several years, and from our collaboration with the OECD review of deliberative forums. For more information and a downloadable copy of the tool, see here.
September 2020, 2nd and 9th Empathy and Collaborative Meaning-Making: An Overview of Citizens’ Councils
The details from the sessions held can be found on this page. This workshop gave a taste of Dynamic Facilitation as a process in the “operating system” of the Citizens’ Councils recently featured in the OECD’s report on “Innovative Citizen Participation and New Democratic Institutions”. It was hosted and facilitated by Rosa Zubizarreta, Andy Paice, Martha Cuffy and Mark Spain.
August 2020 Mark Evans, Democracy 2025 – bridging the trust divide
The YouTube video in here. The powerpoint presentation is here.
July
2020 Citizen Review of 2017-18 ACT Deliberative Processes
Lyn Stephen's paper: Government with the people - building trust in deliberative processes, and slide presentation.
The YouTube video is available here.
June 2020 ACT Election - Choosing the candidate who will deliver government with we, the people.
Zoom presentation and discussion.
May 2020 Revitalising democracy: possibilities for electorate level mobilisations to achieve better parliamentary representation
Look at the session video here.
Deliberate ACT Are you interested in exploring how citizens and governments can better deliberate, decide and collaborate — together?
Join members of the public, academics, passionate democracy advocates, engagement practitioners, public servants.
Deliberate ACT is a collaboration between the
- Canberra Alliance for Participatory Democracy,
- University of Canberra’s Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance
- ACT Government.
Meet Up 9
Recap of Meet Up #9 held on 14 February 2019, when we considered:
Youth Engagement with Democracy — opportunities, competencies and challenges.
Meet Up 10
Recap of Meet Up #10 held on 11 April 2019, when we considered:
Meet Up 11
Recap of Meet Up #11 held on 23 May 2019, when we considered:
Meet Up 1 and 2
Establishing ground rules and purpose
21 February 2018 and 22 March 2018
Meet Up 3
Overview of the recent Citizens’ Jury on Compulsory Third Party Insurance and Citizens Jury Evaluation Principles
2 May 2018
Meet Up 6
Presentations from the University of Canberra’s Centre for Global Governance and Deliberative Democracy
6 September 2018
Meet Up 8
CAPaD Learnings from the ACT Deliberative Processes
22 November 2018
• Att A — Principles for the trial of Citizens Juries in the ACT
• Att B — CAPaD Learnings from the ACT deliberative processes final