Australian Citizens' Parliament

Media contact:
Vickianne Lane by email or phone 0419 460 592.

For background information about the Australian Citizens' Parliament, please review the articles under the Details menu item of the website.

In particular, see the article What is the Australian Citizens' Parliament about?, an overview of the mission of the project.

Here are copies of the newspaper reports (as PDFs) about the Citizens' Parliament and the people that took part:

The NewDemocracy Foundation, which provided the lions share of funding and logistical support for the Australian Citizens' Parliament project, has just released a handbook describing how the event was organised.

The main report (PDF 2.5mb) is the definitive summary of the planning that went into it and what happened. There is also a detailed Appendix (PDF 1.4mb).

Australia's first Citizens' Parliament has now been concluded. One hundred and fifty people, randomly selected from across Australia, have spent four days discussing and deliberating on our democracy and how it could be improved.

Co-chair, Fred Chaney, said that "the Citizens' Parliament was an extraordinary forum. Australians not normally involved in the political process were able to make their contribution to how our governments work. The strengths and weaknesses of our democratic system were reviewed."

After two and a half days of deliberation and many months of preliminary discussions, anecdotal evidence is already showing that Australians not part of the political establishment can show the world how to get the best out of collective decision making. The 150 Citizens Parliamentarians came to Old Parliament with 11 proposals to discuss. After listening to others ideas as well as those of expert panellists, this was expanded to 47 and included everything from a Bill of Rights to having publicly funded media and banning paid political advertisements.

After yesterday's official opening by Senator John Faulkner, Australia's 150 Citizen Parliamentarians deliberated today about ways that Australia's political system can be strengthened to serve us better.

The aim of the day was to broaden everyone's perspective about the Parliamentary system in Australia. The Citizens' Parliamentarians were challenged in their thinking by six panellists, all themselves with very different backgrounds and expertise. This was a two way process - the experts themselves were equally challenged by the Citizen Parliamentarians.