Trust an engaged public

The Rudd Government has released its response to its 2020 Summit, held in April 2008. Rather than responding at the end of last year as promised, they waited precisely one full year. Their commitment to the outcome has waned.

Commentators have treated it superficially, if at all. Most blithely accept the claim that the global financial crisis has hijacked the agenda. Many would rather talk about the shift to an Australian Republic. Yawn. Fizz.

The nine Summit ideas that the Government has opted to support are all worthwhile. But most of the 900 others deserved to miss the cut.

The invited Summiteers attended with special interests, with little interest in finding new, common ground. It was just a contest of pre-existing ideas. The high expectation of innovation was misguided.

I care about how government engages with its citizens, so I turned to the governance stream of the Summit. There were several ideas put forward that related to enhancing participatory democracy, for citizens to be more than just consulted or heard.

Rudd crows about his Community Cabinets, which are fine for the listening exercises that they are. There is nothing binding about them. They remind the Ministers that they are serving people rather than just the camera. Aside from the usual suspects who show up to whinge, the events provide an opportunity for spruikers to get an inside track. This is hardly the high bar of citizen engagement.

The 2020 Response report says:

[T]he Government agrees with the idea of enhancing community engagement. The Government’s approach is to trial different and innovative mechanisms and draw on specific suggestions across several streams in that context.

The Government is also considering holding a set of forums that will bring together experts, business and community representatives and others with a strong interest in a number of topics to promote a collaborative approach to challenging issues and better inform government decision making.

The problem is that Rudd prefers to look no further than hand-picked elites and stakeholders when considering public engagement.

Rudd's concept of community does not actually include the public!

I wonder what Rudd and his Cabinet think about trial juries, comprised of citizens who are randomly-selected and conscripted? Juries bring their diversity of values and beliefs to the court. With little assistance, they are collectively capable of judging the credibility of the presented evidence and witnesses. Our judicial system has depended on juries for generations.

If it is acceptable to have randomly-selected juries compliment and check judicial power, then it also seems reasonable to have them compliment and check legislative power. It has been done elsewhere.

In 2004, the government of the Canadian province of British Columbia (BC) convened a Citizens' Assembly to examine their electoral system. Their first-past-the-post system rarely translates the popular vote proportionally into legislative seats.

The elected members of the provincial legislature were reluctant to reform the system because their political parties benefitted by the status quo. Experts alone would not convince a cynical public to change. But a group of engaged and unaligned citizens taking ownership of the problem probably could.

The assembly recommended introducing a system called Single Transferable Vote (STV) (similar to Tasmania's Hare-Clark system). The assembly even designed a particular variant of STV to meet the particular needs of BC.

At a January reunion, they released the following statement:

We were 160 ordinary citizens, drawn randomly from the voters list. We came from every part of BC, from every walk of life, men and women, young and young at heart. We spent 11 months working together. We learned about electoral systems and BC's electoral history, and most importantly, we heard from the people of British Columbia. We weren't activists, or reformers, or even especially interested in politics when we started - but we came to believe ... wholeheartedly that STV is best for BC. Not just urban BC, or rural BC, or left or right - BC-STV is best for all of BC.

When the citizens of BC vote in a provincial election coming up on May 12, they will also vote on a referendum to switch to STV. The people of BC should trust the recommendations of their Citizens' Assembly.
Citizens could be very handy in lending the government some legitimacy during these troubled times. A randomly-selected, facilitated group of citizens can work with experts and stakeholders to create solutions that would find widespread support. For example, perhaps there was a better way to stimulate the economy than emptying the Treasury coffers into public bank accounts.

This sort of public engagement would compliment the advice and support given to our bureaucrats and elected representatives and put them in confident rather than contested decision-making situations.

Putting trust in an engaged microcosm of the public might even be reciprocated by increased public trust in our political system and its actors.