Deliberative Engagement for Local Government

Name: Deliberative Engagement for Local Government
Start: 2025-06-15T09:00:00+0930
End: 2025-06-15T14:00:00+0930
Location: Woodville Town Hall

Sun, 15 Jun, 9am - 2pm ACST

Woodville Town Hall

woodville south, australia

Citizen Assemblies for South Australia

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Event description

Deliberative Engagement for Local Government – Sunday 15 June 2025

Woodville Town Hall, 72 Woodville Rd, Woodville, SA

Want to connect with people in your community who don’t normally engage?
Need to diffuse budget outrage?
Need to help your community find common ground… or a way forward on divisive issues?
Or just super interested in deliberative practice?

This meeting is for you!

This meeting explores key aspects of deliberative democracy, and what makes it different from traditional engagement methods.
We will share a number of Australian local government case studies which showcase:

- how deliberative processes can help you prevent outrage in your communities around budgets
- how to effectively manage polarising problems concerning your community (saving time, money and reducing community backlash), and
- approaches which can embed deliberative practice in the work of councils.

In particular, we will go deep into participatory budgeting and how it can help you. This will be a fun and interactive workshop, where the focus will be on you and your council’s needs. We will explore the challenges you have and how you can overcome them.

You will have the benefit of two of Australia’s most experienced deliberative practitioners – Emma Fletcher, CoCEO democracyCo and Sonia Randhawa, from Sortition Foundation.

This meeting is ideal for elected representatives, senior council staff and community engagement practitioners alike. Enjoy a relaxed session where Emma and Sonia will be available to provide you with bespoke advice that meets your individual council needs.

If you’d like to learn more about this innovative and truly democratic approach to policy making, make a weekend of it and come along as well to the national conference the previous day - Citizen Assemblies - Policy without Politics - on Sat 14 June, at the same venue!

Tickets for good, not greed Humanitix dedicates 100% of profits from booking fees to charity

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Citizen Assemblies for South Australia

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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.

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Sun, 15 Jun, 9am - 2pm ACST

Woodville Town Hall

woodville south, australia

Hosted by Citizen Assemblies for South Australia