Page 3179 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 23 August 2017
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(v) is subject to independent post-implementation analysis, which will be made public and used to inform the model for an expanded participatory budgeting process in the ACT; and
(b) commit to using participatory budgeting processes to inform the priorities of the entire ACT Budget by the conclusion of 9th Assembly in 2020, applying lessons learned during the pilot.
My motion is about participatory budgeting. It is a deliberative democracy method that uses citizens to prioritise budget spending. It has been used successfully in Australia and overseas. I am moving this motion today because it is clear that we are living in a time when many people are dissatisfied with our democracy. They doubt their ability to influence government. For example, in the United Kingdom a referendum was recently held with the result being Brexit, despite the polls all making it clear that the majority did not support Brexit. It seems the majority knew that they were the majority; so they did not bother to vote.
I am also moving this motion because an ANU study in December 2016 showed that public trust, confidence and satisfaction with Australian democracy have dropped to record lows. Trust in politicians has dropped to the lowest level since it was first measured in 1967, with only 26 per cent of respondents expressing confidence in the government. Close to half the respondents were not satisfied with the state of democracy in Australia, which is the lowest level recorded since the 1970s.
Talking to people, the trend is clear. Canberrans often say to me that they do not have the information to understand why decisions are made and they do not know how or even if their feedback influences government decisions. They just do not know or understand what is going on. This is particularly true in the planning space. Many people have told me that they feel developers have too much power. They do not understand what is happening to Canberra and they certainly do not understand what has happened to their local neighbourhood or, if they do understand, they do not agree.
This community disillusionment is a compelling reason to discuss how we can give citizens a more meaningful say in government decision-making. Every day in the Assembly many of us talk about the need for better community consultation. The piece of legislation, the budget, that we anticipate passing tomorrow is arguably the most important piece of legislation we will pass all year. To use the government’s own words, the budget “shows the government’s social and political priorities and how the government intends to achieve these.”
We have a wealth of existing legislation and common law that covers most of the issues of our communal life. We pass motions and legislation every sitting day. Most of them, in fact, have some implications for the budget as they will need resources, even if small, to implement them. But how do we know what should be in the budget?
Of course, the major items are debated each election but in the election you have to vote for a candidate or a party’s whole package. You cannot say, “I will have the Greens on climate change, Labor on education, the Liberals on hospitals and the Sex Party on the Telstra Tower.”
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