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Yesterday I listened to a TED talk from economist Yanis Varoufakis, who was the former Minister of Finance for Greece. What he said certainly grabbed me: “Capitalism will eat democracy — unless we speak up.” This talk was at TED Geneva in December 2015, and he talked about the whole world and how we could be destroyed by capitalism. Oh yes, I certainly know this!!

Looking elsewhere, I'd found newDemocracy Foundation in a comment in an article on Facebook. I read through their website and became (further) intrigued. nDF is a democratic group which says on their website: “We innovate in how we do democracy”. It was founded by the Transfield Managing Director, Luca Belgiorno-Nettis, who is also part of “many of its subsidiary companies, as well as a Director of Sydney Harbour Tunnel Ltd and non-executive director of Perisher Blue Pty Ltd”.

In this sort of corporate environment, I would never have thought he was democratic. I looked up the other board, executive, research committee and supporters, and found that many in nDF said they were ALP, others said they were LNP, and some were even different political parties: Greens, for instance. No political base, but certainly a democracy base.

In February of 2009 newDemocracy was a supporter for the convention called the Citizen Parliament, along with the Australian National University, the University of Sydney and the Curtin University of Technology. Back in 2009 I didn't really have anything in Aus politics which I could blog about (I wasn't a citizen back then but I certainly did write about some policies), but this year it started winding me up. I became a citizen in January, became more and more frustrated with how this government was treating people like me on DSP (as well as any other person who received any sort of Centrelink income), almost cried when LNP crawled into government again when I'd been waiting for them to just disappear, and very recently I became more frustrated with how this government and their supporters don't seem to have any awareness of how anyone on a Centrelink income has to live in poverty.

I started to find other democratics, even in Australia! (Yes, that certainly gave me a shock... democratic people who just worked so well in this country!) I found examples of Citizen Jury sittings which had happened in NSW, ACT, Vic and SA, and similar in Qld, WA, NT or TAS. It seemed they are springing up all over Aussie:

• democracyCo started in 2014 and runs the Deliberative Collective who operates in SA
• Arts Queensland printed a pdf which gives “Tips for identifying community need and demand”
• Infrastructure Victoria was reported as the watchdog on iseekplant website
• Tasmania Government's Department of Health and Human Services has engaged Citizen Juries for the decision-making process
• Your Say in SA talks about Citizen Juries
• The People's Panel acts in Melbourne, and
• Queensland government has a website called Get Involved, which lists consultations which you can have you say if you want to.

I am sure that there are more than these throughout Australia, but am I the only one who didn't know about them? Can I blame my stroke?

I registered with newDemocracy because, even though they seem too engaged to involve me, I want to watch. This sort of involvement, albeit not democratic, has happened for me for years (have a look through my five-year-old Whacksworks), but I had a long break from it from my stroke. Maybe now I'm behind, but I think I definitely can catch up!

There are two consultations which I will respond to in Queensland: Adapting to climate change: have your say which closes 14 December this year, and Help shape South East Queensland's future which is open until 3 March 2017. I read, in nDF, how to prepare myself for a “sitting”, which is a bit different than these issues, but I still have a lot of words inside my head which I need to get out onto paper to get back to them.

I am a “Baby boomer”, not a “Gen X” or a “Millenial”, but I reckon I still have 10-20-30 years to still live and still watch politics... and still get damned frustrated when I see a government who doesn't follow the public. “Democracy” is listed by dictionary.com as “government by the people; a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system.” That sounds very good... so why isn't it?

The government in Australia right now isn't democratic.The public in Australia should look at how they can fix this issue.