This wicked question was the underpinning for the Policy Without Politics Conference held in mid-2025 in Adelaide, run by Citizen Assemblies for SA (CAfSA) and supported by our team at DemocracyCo. Across the day we heard from influential thinkers and practitioners including:
Over one wet and wild Saturday, participants experienced a series of thought-provoking presentations, panel discussions and a hands-on workshop session facilitated by DemocracyCo. We explored the problems and failings of representative democracy as we know it, learnt about deliberative democracy and the opportunities it may present for democratic renewal, and pondered what the way forward might be for deliberative approaches in Australia.
After lunch, participants had the opportunity to experience a mini deliberative process themselves, where DemocracyCo randomised participants into small groups for a conversation on how deliberative could improve our democracy and what the barriers might be for more deliberative processes to happen. We then shared an online ideas collection and voting tool (Pol.is) to gather ideas for how we could overcome the barriers to using deliberative in Australia. There is nothing like experiencing a technique first-hand to really get a feel for it!
DemocracyCo also ran a workshop for local government participants on the Sunday, which explored the key elements of deliberative democracy in much greater depth. The day included discussion on the contexts that deliberative is best suited to and what its benefits are, how to hear from diverse voices, how to train the “muscles” that build democratic skills and lots of time for questions and troubleshooting participant challenges. It was great to see the enthusiasm and curiosity of our attendees in this session, who walked away with more tools in their kit that they call pull out when they’re exploring complex challenges.
You can see a communique with the results of the Saturday DemocracyCo workshop session here.
You can find a recording by the ABC of Jay’s presentation which asked whether citizen’s juries can put the people back in democracy here: Can citizen juries put the people back in democracy? – ABC listen
The conference raised a lot of interest in the potential for deliberative techniques such as Citizen’s Assemblies to help tackle challenges that have become quite intractable. DemocracyCo are now exploring with CAfSA and other deliberative specialists what the next steps might be to see more deliberative processes happening in South Australia and beyond so watch this space!
