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.

DemFest 21

A festival celebrating  locally driven democracy in Australia.

Visit the DemFest21 site to view the presentations and watch the videos of the sessions

Community Assessment Tool for Participatory Processes

The Genuine Citizens Participation Action Group, a subgroup of CAPaD, has used the nine criteria outlined by the OECD's 'Catching the Deliberative Wave' report,to develop an assessment tool that the community can apply to any deliberative or participatory democracy process, to ascertain its level of integrity.

CAPaD’S reflections on our 6 year journey of learning and developing a the Community Assessment Tool for effective public deliberation is here: Developing a deliberative democracy assessment tool for communities. An open source Word document template for the Community Assessment Tool is available here. Please acknowledge the source. A reflection on the 2021 Gene Editing Citizens July that used this tool will be available in 2022.

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

Opinion, comment and Letters to the Editor

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.

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.