What an excellent edition to-day, NG. The amusing Billy Crystal/G Norton piece led me on to Stephen Fry appearances - much to chuckle at. Then of course Citizens Assemblies - with you all the way from when you first properly introduced me to the concept some years back. I saw you on the ABC speaking to the Hobart Stadium - with Jacqui Lambie in her regular "have-a-gutful" speaking mode to round it off. Then Penleigh Boyd - and that beautiful rural scene taking me back to 1984 when I did a single subject at Sydney U - Australian Literature III with some stellar names - including reading Arthur Boyd (uncle to Penleigh, I think - I'll need to check this) and his novel The Cardboard Crown - led through its themes by Prof. of Australian Literature (and Chair of the ABC?) Leonie Kramer. Followed by your tales of Arthur Boyd's paintings of Barry Humphreys and Manning Clark and your lovely words about Dymphna which make me intend to forward your entire offering to-day to a writer friend in Kalamata - Gillian (née Hicks) Bouras. I relished - as who wouldn't - the Sam Harris cautionary tale on how a friendship with Elon Musk can turn nasty and ever-after-vengeful. And then for a return to calm - the Minuet in G Major by Ruth Slenczynska from 1930 when she was five - and is now 100! Wow! And the piece on studying more Indian Philosophy - Ralph Stephen Weir - Lincoln U - I shall pass on to a good Indian scientist friend - himself a philosopher - Dr S Kundu - in Delhi. (Cultural chauvinsm, indeed - that not more is studied - I'll forward it too to Toby Zoates - an Australian punk artist and writer who knows more of such things in India than anyone I've ever met - and where he is at the moment. As for the Jane Austen Mathematics - how I wish I had had that to guide my 1987 HSC English class through Emma. Though to be fair we did a whole week-end seminar session led by the Janes Austen school/publisher/etc - Barbara Ker Wilson who had not long previously written the novel "Jane Austen in Australia" and knew so much about Jane Austen to stimulate my students. And finally - giving up on the heaviosity - but relishing the repartee between Clive James and Germaine Greer. Thank-you, as always, NG.
Hi Nick, I've just been linked your post, thanks for writing it. I too think a national citizens' assembly would be excellent, especially if it has the opportunity to set its own agenda.
One idea I had was that we should trial it first, to show people around the nation what the idea is and how it works. If there's any national vote or referendum on this assembly, it should only be after we've seen it.
That was the main problem with the Voice referendum - people were asked to decide upon something they'd never seen in practice. If only the Voice was established first, and then the effort to embed it was made afterwards...
The other place where trials are incredibly important is when redesigning streets for health and safety reasons. We can learn about local street politics from places like London, where local streets have been and continue to be calmed so that people (especially kids) can enjoy meeting one another and getting around more safely and comfortably. In these places, changes to traffic conditions can be trialled so that the idea can be tested in real life conditions, and people can experience the profound positive impacts that it has. Any negative impacts turn out to be much smaller than people might anticipate, and these things fade away as people adjust, while the positive benefits continue to build over time.
So I hope that we could trial a national citizens' assembly first too. What do you think?
I don't anticipate governments supporting this, so the logic I'm using here is that the standing assembly is negotiated in as part of the price of the cross-bench supporting one side or another. Such circumstances come about very rarely. Negotiating for a trial is just conceding that it will disappear the moment the political winds change.
In any event, we had trials of citizen assemblies. They've mostly been very successful, though you could argue the one on nuclear waste in South Australia wasn't much chop.
In any event, it seems unlikely the cross-bench will have the focus to go for this - or at least to go for a standing assembly very hard.
So we're back with my original idea for establishing a privately funded citizen assembly and seeking to legitimise it as people see it and become familiar with it.
Yes, I've heard about citizens assemblies being run quite a bit at different levels. My intention there was that if one is framed as running at the Australian national level, then that could be a breakthrough event in the national consciousness.
And yes the barriers are certainly high. I agree that a privately funded model is probably useful in the foreseeable future.
Governance is my profession, and I experimented with many ‘bottom up’ mechanisms for years. Now I think that was misguided, the basic assumption that ‘the people’ or citizens run democracies. All societies operate using status hierarchies, even democracies. Status is the currency of all social life, because it’s also identity. Without status, you’re literally nobody. And that’s good as well bad, status is a measure of quality too. Democratic governments are the same, elections have been gamed for years by status hierarchies.
But it’s also a deeper issue, because groups of people can’t actually act as groups, it’s not logistically or even logically possible. They follow or emulate a small subset (up to 5%) of the group. I got that figure from the research done on Korean POW camps in the Korean War, where the Koreans removed the leaders among prisoners, about 5% of them, and the rest then basically just waited to die. It’s a rough figure that matches most groups I’ve observed, of any scale.
I think the controls humanity developed to manage status weren’t by using any citizenry or public. Instead we developed master status hierarchies (mostly churches and monarchies), and embedded accumulating knowledge and due process there, and then allowed all other status hierarchies to cascade from those master central hierarchies.
What an excellent edition to-day, NG. The amusing Billy Crystal/G Norton piece led me on to Stephen Fry appearances - much to chuckle at. Then of course Citizens Assemblies - with you all the way from when you first properly introduced me to the concept some years back. I saw you on the ABC speaking to the Hobart Stadium - with Jacqui Lambie in her regular "have-a-gutful" speaking mode to round it off. Then Penleigh Boyd - and that beautiful rural scene taking me back to 1984 when I did a single subject at Sydney U - Australian Literature III with some stellar names - including reading Arthur Boyd (uncle to Penleigh, I think - I'll need to check this) and his novel The Cardboard Crown - led through its themes by Prof. of Australian Literature (and Chair of the ABC?) Leonie Kramer. Followed by your tales of Arthur Boyd's paintings of Barry Humphreys and Manning Clark and your lovely words about Dymphna which make me intend to forward your entire offering to-day to a writer friend in Kalamata - Gillian (née Hicks) Bouras. I relished - as who wouldn't - the Sam Harris cautionary tale on how a friendship with Elon Musk can turn nasty and ever-after-vengeful. And then for a return to calm - the Minuet in G Major by Ruth Slenczynska from 1930 when she was five - and is now 100! Wow! And the piece on studying more Indian Philosophy - Ralph Stephen Weir - Lincoln U - I shall pass on to a good Indian scientist friend - himself a philosopher - Dr S Kundu - in Delhi. (Cultural chauvinsm, indeed - that not more is studied - I'll forward it too to Toby Zoates - an Australian punk artist and writer who knows more of such things in India than anyone I've ever met - and where he is at the moment. As for the Jane Austen Mathematics - how I wish I had had that to guide my 1987 HSC English class through Emma. Though to be fair we did a whole week-end seminar session led by the Janes Austen school/publisher/etc - Barbara Ker Wilson who had not long previously written the novel "Jane Austen in Australia" and knew so much about Jane Austen to stimulate my students. And finally - giving up on the heaviosity - but relishing the repartee between Clive James and Germaine Greer. Thank-you, as always, NG.
Thanks very much Jim.
Hi Nick, I've just been linked your post, thanks for writing it. I too think a national citizens' assembly would be excellent, especially if it has the opportunity to set its own agenda.
One idea I had was that we should trial it first, to show people around the nation what the idea is and how it works. If there's any national vote or referendum on this assembly, it should only be after we've seen it.
That was the main problem with the Voice referendum - people were asked to decide upon something they'd never seen in practice. If only the Voice was established first, and then the effort to embed it was made afterwards...
The other place where trials are incredibly important is when redesigning streets for health and safety reasons. We can learn about local street politics from places like London, where local streets have been and continue to be calmed so that people (especially kids) can enjoy meeting one another and getting around more safely and comfortably. In these places, changes to traffic conditions can be trialled so that the idea can be tested in real life conditions, and people can experience the profound positive impacts that it has. Any negative impacts turn out to be much smaller than people might anticipate, and these things fade away as people adjust, while the positive benefits continue to build over time.
So I hope that we could trial a national citizens' assembly first too. What do you think?
I don't anticipate governments supporting this, so the logic I'm using here is that the standing assembly is negotiated in as part of the price of the cross-bench supporting one side or another. Such circumstances come about very rarely. Negotiating for a trial is just conceding that it will disappear the moment the political winds change.
In any event, we had trials of citizen assemblies. They've mostly been very successful, though you could argue the one on nuclear waste in South Australia wasn't much chop.
In any event, it seems unlikely the cross-bench will have the focus to go for this - or at least to go for a standing assembly very hard.
So we're back with my original idea for establishing a privately funded citizen assembly and seeking to legitimise it as people see it and become familiar with it.
Oh that was quick, thanks for your comments.
Yes, I've heard about citizens assemblies being run quite a bit at different levels. My intention there was that if one is framed as running at the Australian national level, then that could be a breakthrough event in the national consciousness.
And yes the barriers are certainly high. I agree that a privately funded model is probably useful in the foreseeable future.
Anyway I hope to see it happen. Cheers!
Governance is my profession, and I experimented with many ‘bottom up’ mechanisms for years. Now I think that was misguided, the basic assumption that ‘the people’ or citizens run democracies. All societies operate using status hierarchies, even democracies. Status is the currency of all social life, because it’s also identity. Without status, you’re literally nobody. And that’s good as well bad, status is a measure of quality too. Democratic governments are the same, elections have been gamed for years by status hierarchies.
But it’s also a deeper issue, because groups of people can’t actually act as groups, it’s not logistically or even logically possible. They follow or emulate a small subset (up to 5%) of the group. I got that figure from the research done on Korean POW camps in the Korean War, where the Koreans removed the leaders among prisoners, about 5% of them, and the rest then basically just waited to die. It’s a rough figure that matches most groups I’ve observed, of any scale.
I think the controls humanity developed to manage status weren’t by using any citizenry or public. Instead we developed master status hierarchies (mostly churches and monarchies), and embedded accumulating knowledge and due process there, and then allowed all other status hierarchies to cascade from those master central hierarchies.