Page 43 - Enabling National Initiatives to Take Democracy Beyond Elections

What is required of you to make this work This handbook doesn’t give you a free pass. We need to ask two things of you, When are you willing to share the decision? On that issue, are you willing to respond to any answer the community may offer, and to give that answer publicly and in detail? These are not loaded questions.There are some questions which governments may quite sensibly choose not to be willing to respond to at a certain time. One example we have encountered with a Ministerial advisor focused on how to fund public transport. He noted that he had confidence in our ability to run a civic lottery to randomly-select a truly diverse group across the community. He had confidence that we would be able to have them engage with a broad range of contested sources. He had confidence that they would find common ground around a logical solution. His concern was that one logical solution they may arrive at would never be accepted by his party members. So while he was willing to share the decision, he was not willing to respond to some potential answers. It’s a good reason for a project not to proceed. This is the pair of critically important decisions for you to make before asking your department to act on these principles: what question do you want asked of the population, and what public commitment to respond to it (or enact it) are you willing to give? 41