Deliberations

I wrote this in a post this morning:

I think most people (including the Climate Minister) misunderstand what the Citizens’ Assembly should do. They aren’t going to reinvent the wheel because all the “facts” and “proposals” are out there with considerable stakeholder investment. Participants won’t become educated to become climate scientists or economists or pansies of the Government position. Instead they need to get past the political and media rhetoric and figure out a reasonable and reasoned way to judge the polarised spread of public, private and institutional claims and interpretations of those positions. They need to explore what is credible and what matters to whom. Their challenge is to determine the normative agenda of a nation when it comes to climate policy. Their task is ethical rather than empirical. That’s why we need ordinary people to do it.

The CA would recommend criteria that would help the Government to choose a policy design that most Australians can live with, that appears legitimate to the public (ie. not privileging particular interests, including the Gov’t‘s) and that has the best chance of enduring the whims of successive elected governments. The “deep” consensus that Gillard and Wong talk about isn’t so much about agreeing on all aspects of the policy, but about the method to judge them and perhaps rework them in the future.

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