Status: activeType: 🔬 researchCountry: Australia Website: www.newdemocracy.com.au

Status	active
Type	🔬 research
Country	Australia
Website	www.newdemocracy.com.au
Contact	iain.walker@newdemocracy.com.au
RSS feed	www.newdemocracy.com.au/feed
Concepts	Citizens Assembly Deliberative Democracy Sortition Isegoria Cognitive Division Of Labour
Last activity	2026-03-04 rss Latest post: Final report: Upper House Inquiry into Community Consultation Practices.

newDemocracy Foundation

newDemocracy is one of Australia's most active organisations in the deliberative democracy space. It conducts real-world trials using random selection and deliberation — the jury model — to show that citizens, given good information and time to deliberate, can reach considered decisions on complex public issues.

The foundation is non-partisan and works across government, community, and institutional settings. It publishes research on what works, what doesn't, and why — with the explicit goal of making deliberative methods a normal part of democratic governance rather than an experimental curiosity.

Approach

newDemocracy's core argument is that the adversarial, partisan nature of representative democracy produces poor decisions on long-term or complex issues, and that randomly selected citizens' assemblies and juries consistently outperform what elected bodies produce when given the same brief. Their work is empirical — they run trials, document outcomes, and publish findings.

Key people

• Luca Belgiorno-Nettis — founder and principal funder of the newDemocracy Foundation. A Sydney-based infrastructure developer and philanthropist who became a significant advocate for deliberative democracy in Australia after growing disillusioned with conventional politics.¹
• Nicholas Gruen — prominent economist and longstanding collaborator, who has presented to DOD on deliberative democracy and the concept of isegoria. One of newDemocracy's most visible intellectual contributors. See 2017 presentation

Links

• Website: newdemocracy.com.au

See also

• Citizens' Assembly
• Sortition
• Isegoria
• Cognitive Division of Labour
• Citizens' Democracy: Presentations and Q&A — Nicholas Gruen and Hubertus Hofkirchner present to DOD, 2017
• Isegoria: The Way Citizens' Juries Deliver It, How Elections Destroy It — Nicholas Gruen in conversation with DOD, 2020
• G1000
• MASS LBP
• DemocracyNext

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1. "The newDemocracy Foundation was launched in 2007, with Luca Belgiorno-Nettis... as the inaugural directors." and "Luca had a 30-year career in Transfield, a large infrastructure and engineering company founded by his father," newDemocracy Foundation, History. ↩

History

• 2007-01-01 newDemocracy Foundation launched — one of the first organisations worldwide dedicated exclusively to citizens' assemblies
  Sourcing: High

  The newDemocracy Foundation was launched in 2007, with Luca Belgiorno-Nettis, Lyn Carson, Kathy Jones and Ian Marsh as the inaugural directors.

  ↗ View source
• 2009-01-01 Australian Citizens' Parliament — 150 citizens deliberate on strengthening Australia's democracy
  Sourcing: High

  Our first big project was the Australian Citizens’ Parliament in 2009, which was an Australian Research Centre-funded citizens’ assembly involving 150 Australians deliberating on how to strengthen Australia’s system of government.

  ↗ View source
• 2017-01-01 Democracy R&D international network founded with newDemocracy as a founding member
  Sourcing: High

  Luca had a 30-year career in Transfield, a large infrastructure and engineering company founded by his father.

  ↗ View source
• 2018-01-01 Helps design Ostbelgien's permanent Citizens' Council — world's first embedded in a parliament
  Sourcing: High

  Still in 2018, we were invited to travel to Belgium with a several other academics and practitioners to consult on what would become the world’s first permanent Citizens’ Council in Eupen, the capital of the autonomous Ostbelgien region.

  ↗ View source