Alicia Payne has heard the wider political ramifications of the federal election result on May 21 and is about to embark on a "brave" Australian-first trial in an effort to be a better and wider informed voice for her electorate.
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The Federal Labor Member for Canberra is working with collective decision-making advocates, DemocracyCo, to form 'The Canberra Forum', an ongoing, deliberative democracy forum to be made of up to 45 randomly-chosen, engaged Canberrans.
Forum participation is set down as 20 hours over a 13-week period and the task will be to discuss burning political topics and advise the two-term federal member with an 80 per cent consensus view. The topics may already be subject to parliamentary debate or be identified through an electorate-wide survey.
Ms Payne has committed to taking the advice to the Labor caucus and into Federal Parliament. She has told The Canberra Times that with low trust in politics and the May election result pointing to a major parties turn off, she is committing to greater listening and representation in Federal Parliament.
"There is a level of disenchantment with politics in Australia and I think it's actually something that's always been here in Australia. We don't mythologise our politicians at all," she said.
"Under the previous government, [we] had real lows in the integrity of government and that's why things like the federal integrity commission are so important and that's one of our top priorities now we're in government.
DemocracyCo has been behind other deliberative democracy moves around Australia, including citizen juries and strategies and panels, but The Canberra Forum is the first federal electorate effort seeking deeper voter engagement.
DemocracyCo chief executive Emma Fletcher described Ms Payne as "brave".
"Brave in the sense that I think she's trying something new and different and wanting to give it a go. And so, you know, to some extent, that is brave," she said.
Participation is a random invitation based off the electoral roll and people can choose to opt-in, although there will likely be some capacity for people to self-nominate.
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Ms Fletcher said a diversity of forum views will be needed to help Ms Payne better represent her community.
"So we'd want gender diversity. We'd want age diversity. Hopefully, cultural diversity," she said.
"Income is hard, but we do try and look to make sure we get people from different places, maybe with renters or owners of houses to try and get an economic diversity."
The aim with The Canberra Forum is then to get around an 80 per cent consensus on issues and work towards the MP not hearing what they want to hear.
"Alicia has said herself that she doesn't necessarily want to hear from Labor people, just Labor people. She wants to hear from a diversity of her community. So that's really, really important," she said.
Ms Payne said she tried her best to be as available and engaging as possible in her first term, but said engagement is often limited to people who self-select in coming forward.
She hopes the forum will draw people out who are normally less likely to be heard or who perhaps have not really thought about an issue.
"I see this as on top of the normal listening that I do, but this is something that we'll commit to which will meet throughout the term," she said. "And it will just be another sort of core part of my job and it's another way of listening to the Canberra community and taking those views into the parliament and excitingly into the government as part of the Labor caucus.
"I want them to know that the MP and the government are listening. And I want them to come with an open mind to participate."
The Member for Canberra has also reflected on her recent re-election which cemented the progressive nature of the seat. The 6 per cent swing away from the Liberals candidate made Canberra now officially a Labor-Greens two-party-preferred seat. Long a Greens target seat, Greens candidate Tim Hollo received a small swing but Ms Payne was resoundingly returned with a swing of 4.3 per cent.
"People in Canberra are concerned about progressive issues and the issues that people raised with me were things like climate change, social justice issues and things that Labor were talking about central to our campaign," she said.
"So I think it obviously reflects that. And yes, as a local member, I hope it also reflects that last time I was new and having worked my hardest for the last three years, I hope that is part of that result."
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