Listening to Cathy goes to Canberra, Conversations with Richard Fidler, ABC Radio. Talking abut her new book. Some take homes: Their aim was to make the seat marginal; make it competitive. Start with the local member. Safe seats don’t get attention. Listen to the young people. What do they know? … Read More
My concern here leads me to sound a note of caution: the language is very important here. Are people dissatisfied with that system of politics that we call democracy or are they really dissatisfied with government or with the failure of government to protect and provide for their needs? Or … Read More
Peter W Tait, 2020 Some background theory for explaining CAPaD’s objective in focusing on representation in participatory democratic theory. From Urbinati N, Warren ME. The concept of representation in contemporary democratic theory. Annual Review of Political Science. 2008;11:387-412 How do we know if representation is legitimate? This depends on the … Read More
Dr Peter Tait, Secretary for the Canberra Alliance for Participatory Democracy The election is happening. Candidates have all been declared, and voting starts this week. It looks to be a close election. Candidates would want to use all possible ways to attract voters. The Alliance invites all candidates to put … Read More
This post was originally printed in Intouch, the PHAA Blog and is printed here with PHAA’s permission. Two things happened in late July that makes me worry for the future of the public’s health in Australia. First, Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced that the National Covid-19 Coordination Commission (NCCC) was … Read More
More curly questions about democracy come in from people who have heard of my passion for fixing government; here is another and the response made. I have no doubt that you and others have had to deal with this question many times in the past. And it is a question that … Read More
Recently I was discussing CAPaD and our aim to make democracy in Canberra better. The person I was conversing with challenged me by asking how we can make democracy better if we haven’t a definition of democracy. Good point. So, this is the first part of my response. Defining democracy … Read More
Beth Slatyer and Peter Tait It is 12 months until the next ACT election. We want to use that election to leverage change toward making government be better. Our focus is on improving our, the people’s, working relationship with our representatives. There are two sides to this: Being clear what … Read More
A commentary – Peter Tait Stoker G, Li J, Halupka M, Evans M. Complacent young citizens or cross-generational solidarity? An analysis of Australian attitudes to democratic politics. Australian Journal of Political Science. 2017;52(2):218-35. This article seeks to answer the question above. The researchers grouped respondents into four age groups: … Read More
Julian Cribb has just published a book entitled Surviving the 21st-century. Humanity’s ten great challenges and how we can overcome them. The book has been unanimously praised by a cast reviewers that includes Paul Ehrlich, Robyn Williams, Clive Hamilton, Peter Doherty, former Governor-General Michael Jeffery, David Lindenmeyer, Mark Stafford-Smith, Bill … Read More