Doing Democracy Better with Iain Walker

The Institute for Democratic and Economic Analysis (IDEA), in partnership with Trust Democracy, invites you to an evening of discussion on building more effective democracies, featuring keynote speaker Iain Walker and a panel of distinguished guests.

In his role as executive director of Australia's newDemocracy Foundation, Iain Walker has become a leading voice in the fight to strengthen and reinvigorate our democratic systems. He has worked with decision-makers around the world, building forums that bring citizens more deeply into the political process and help them forge consensus across profound differences.

Iain's work centres on citizens' assemblies and juries — forums that bring together a diverse, representative group of everyday citizens to address major public problems, giving them balanced information and time to question experts, and asking them to come up with consensus solutions. He brings practical, real-world experience of how these approaches can help governments tackle complex issues, from a 10-year budget for the City of Melbourne to whether Australia should establish nuclear waste storage facilities.

This work has been so successful that citizens' assemblies are now Australians' most popular kind of democratic reform. As trust in government declines, societies become more polarised, and misinformation proliferates, this kind of reinvigorated democracy is needed more than ever.

About the evening

Iain will open with a keynote address on the key features of deliberative public engagement and how it can help societies navigate difficult, high-stakes issues in an era of declining trust and rising polarisation. He will be joined for a panel discussion by Chris Finlayson, former Attorney General of New Zealand, and Claire Timperley, political theorist, exploring how deliberative approaches can be applied in the New Zealand context. The panel will be facilitated by Max Rashbrooke.