How our recent public forum has the Northern Beaches talking

After our recent public forum at Mona Vale, The Tawny Frogmouth—a local Northern Beaches magazine—published an op-ed on citizens' assemblies. The article asked: can deliberative democracy access local wisdom via a citizens' assembly and help the Northern Beaches tackle the myriad challenges we face? Have a read here.

The article elicited this response from Seaforth resident Marion Haas:

Dear Tawny

I write to express my support for a Citizen’s Assembly for the Northern Beaches.

As the Northern Beaches will increasingly be asked to deal with modern, thorny questions such as increased housing density and affordability, immediate environmental issues such as bushfires and coastal erosion as well the problems that modern living brings such as pollution (including litter) and traffic snarls (to mention just a fraction of the topics a Citizen’s Assembly could be asked to consider), the more information and evidence is provided to the community, the better the input to the decision making process will be.

Although not everyone will ever be happy with the final decision on any particular topic, the use of a representative group from the whole community to consider all the sides of a topic, supported by evidence and expertise, is more likely to produce acceptable ideas and recommendations and will enable broader input to Council decision making.

Sincerely,

Marion Haas

Seaforth

This is what we mean by citizen empowerment and participation!