Resources - DemocracyCo

Resources

We care about what’s happening around us, sometimes so much that we are moved to put pen to paper and write about it. Here you will find articles we have written and publications for download.

Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters

The Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters is inquiring into the 2025 Federal Election and exploring electoral improvements. It has published our recent submission – one of over 300 submissions so far!.

In our submission we make two powerful recommendations for how to strengthen our electoral system using, you guessed it, Australians!

Read it here (5min read)

Democracy Fitness

Like any muscle in our bodies, our civic muscle needs training and strengthening. We are now Democracy Fitness trainers – and have bought this amazing fitness program to Australia, all the way from our friends in Denmark! What’s it all about…?

Read on to find out more…?

The challenges facing our democracy

A wide range of institutions, including democracy, economics, religion, gender, technology and higher education, are showing signs of acute stress or outright failure. We need to … re-imagine our social institutions so that they can better contain sources of toxicity and instead empower progressive change if impending catastrophes are to be faced and avoided.

We have avoided talking about how our work helps to achieve social licence… until now.

Read on to find out why we have decided to speak out!

Celebrating ten impactful years

DemocracyCo has just turned 10! So we have been reflecting on the impacts of deliberative practice on the hundreds of projects and thousands of people who have been part of our story. At our recent party to celebrate Emma didn’t give the speech we planned – so we thought we would share it here!

Read the speech we never gave…

Deliberative is improving democracy!

Deliberative processes are improving democracy … in ways we are only beginning to understand…

Read on to find out how….

What's going on in our regions?

As we know, Australia is changing its energy sources. For our wonderful regional communities this is a time of enormous change – as they try to understand how the future will look for themselves, their families and their tight-knit communities.

We recently ran a nation–wide callout, looking for an organisation with strong local relationships and great community connections – to conduct a deliberative project. And we noticed so many similarities in all the regions who wanted to work with us – so I decided to share those reflections, so we can all better understand what’s happening in regions across Australia.

Click here to read my reflections

~ Dan.

Are you interested in how our democracy works and want to help be part of making it work better?

If so, register to be part of our Deliberative Army by leaving your details here. We will be in touch to give you ‘irregular’ updates and information, but most importantly you will be added to our army of active citizens.

By registering, we may contact you to seek your interest to be involved as a participant in a deliberative process.

We should be so lucky...!

We’ve been doing some reading as we kick off 2026. “We should be so lucky”, by Andrew Low, is a great feel-good book to read as we reflect on Australia and what it means to be Australian

What's the difference? A new blog by Dan Popping.

Our new Director, Dan Popping has been reflecting on the difference between deiberative engagement and consultation. In this blog, he shares his insights and also explains when you should use deliberative approaches.

Democracy is voting at elections right? Think again... it needs you!

We have been observing the qualities of people who are actively engaged in their democracy. The good news is we all have these qualities – we just need to find ways to use them!

Resilience building in Regional Australia

Resilience planning can be so much more than the documentation of a suite of actions for assisting a community to improve its adaptability and strength. The process of resilience planning can be resilience building in of itself.

Six Foundations of Deliberative Democracy

There are a growing number of deliberative tools and methods – but they all have the same foundations. We have worked with The Australia and New Zealand School of Government (ANZSOG) to publish the Six Foundations of Deliberative Democracy. Enter your email to access your free downloadable.

Fighting back with democracy

“Fragmentation of the population is a key weapon used against democracy – it lulls the public into thinking they don’t have power”. Kettering Foundation CEO has put the challenge out to all partners of the foundation to use our collective practice to improve democratic life.

Community Engagement must be part of reform

We published our reflections in InDaily in 2019 about how important it is to involve community in reform.

Want better politics?

The problems of Government are a consequence of a paucity of process – for which we are all responsible. Here we make a case for ‘slow policy’.

Opinion is king

As conveners of the worlds’ largest citizens’ jury on nuclear waste storage in South Australia we explore the trend towards individualism, its consequences for public policy and the opportunities offered by deliberative democracy in forging a new way forward. We shared our experience in The Mandarin.

International review of deliberative democracy

Deliberative processes result in moderate, practical, and balanced recommendations. See here our review of work across the world which proves this.

“The facilitation was described universally as brilliant – sensational! I can’t tell you how many compliments we have had about the summit.”

Client