Page 3178 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 23 August 2017
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(ii) “Conduct a review in 2017 of the Budget process, to improve community input to Budget decision-making in future years”;
(d) new approaches to community consultation are needed in the ACT and the Government has made some progress on its Parliamentary Agreement commitments by funding a citizens’ jury pilot, community engagement training for Government staff and recruiting a participatory democracy expert; and
(e) Chief Minister Barr stated in The Canberra Times on 20 May 2017 “The silent majority was heard loud and clear in the 2016 election. It needs to be heard in between elections, too. I want more Canberrans to be able to play a role in shaping their city every day. …Lack of consultation is not the problem, but the way we consult needs to change”;
(3) asserts that as a well-studied community engagement method with proven effectiveness, participatory budgeting can:
(a) better incorporate citizens’ needs and preferences into government deliberations, and improve transparency in resource allocation and service delivery;
(b) offer citizens at large an opportunity to learn about government operations, and to deliberate, debate and influence the allocation of public resources; and
(c) educate, engage and empower citizens and strengthen inclusive governance by giving marginalised groups more opportunities to have their voices heard and influence public decision making; and
(4) calls on the ACT Government to:
(a) as part of its Budget Review to “improve community input”, to conduct a participatory budgeting pilot for the 2018-19 ACT Budget which:
(i) commits the discretionary portion of the City Services budget, anticipated to be in the order of 20 percent of the total City Services budget, to allocation through a participatory budgeting process;
(ii) is designed by an advisory group with relevant expertise in deliberative democracy processes, including practitioners, academics and the community sector, to be convened by the Government;
(iii) is informed by the set of principles developed by ACTCOSS and CAPAD to ensure that deliberative mechanisms are trialled in a robust, respectful and informed way;
(iv) uses a randomly selected panel as a representative cross-section of the Canberra community and provides the panel with all relevant information; and
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