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Labor Wins in West Australia with
Deliberative Democracy Platform:
Major Conference to be Held in
May 2005
The Labor Government of West Australia was
re-elected on February 26, 2005 despite media
predictions that it would not win. A major
bone of contention was Labor’s commitment
to a "sustainable environment" and to use
much more public deliberation in planning to
achieve that goal.
The Minister of Planning and Infrastructure,
Allanah MacTiernan, has pioneered innovative
ways of engaging citizens in joint planning with
the government. She had used citizens juries,
consensus conferences, "deliberative polls,"
"21st century electronic town meetings" to fulfill Labor’s promise.
Opponents considered this direction to be wrong, a sign of govenmental weakness on the environmental issues, and an incorrect delegation of power to the citizenry. This became an issue in the campaign but did not work to Labor’s disadvantage.
Even after Labor’s victory, opponents of its
approach predicted that Minister MacTiernan
would not retain her position with the Government.
They were wrong.
First on the Minister’s second term agenda is a
21st Century Town Meeting on regional open space.
Next, she will try to encourage a broader spectrum
of government, business and community to implement
best practice community engagement initiatives.The government will host a conference called"Innovation in Community Engagement: Interactive
Learning with World Experts," in Perth, Western
Australia, on May 30-31, 2005. The focus will be
on learning by doing. Deliberative democracy experts
from the U.S.A., Canada, Australia, will take part.