Citizen Assemblies for SA (CAfSA) was founded in Adelaide in 2023 and is an incorporated association advocating for the use of CAs in public policy making.
SA has a tradition of social and economic innovation that has repeatedly resurfaced over the last 180 years. Unlike the rest of Australia, SA had a convict-free foundation. It led the nation in giving women the vote in the 1890s, and was the first in the world to allow women to stand for parliament. From it’s state-led industrialisation in the 1950s, to the social reforms of the Dunstan government in the 1960s and 70s, and to national leadership in wind and solar energy today, SA has tended to chart an independent and innovative course.
The State is thus especially well placed to give serious attention to the potential of CAs in the open development of public policy, and reform of political mechanisms that would embrace and fund their recommendations.
Short-term aim: Local and State government to include CAs as standard practice in policy making.
Long-term aims: To build community trust to the point where the State creates a permanent sortition-based chamber with binding powers. One way forward could be an extra chamber that decides on subjects for State-funded CAs, as happens now in the province of Ostbelgian in Belgium. Another possibility might be for the SA Legislative Council to become a sortition-based chamber – i.e. members are short-term (say 12 months only) and like juries, are selected by lot from the electoral roll.