Governments have worn people down by asking for their views and ignoring what they hear.
Kiama Council’s draft engagement strategy shows how the pattern works. It uses the language of participation, then says the community will rarely be given influence because councillors make the final decisions.
That is democracy reduced to voting day.
In a true democracy councillors can make a community informed final decision after they have helped the community define the question, examine the evidence and develop the options. Instead, residents are too often invited in after the answer has already been decided..
I have watched this model play out in consultation after consultation. Residents read the documents, give up their time, write detailed submissions backed by evidence and explain how a proposal will affect their lives and their community.
Council thanks them for participating, then adopts a policy that looks almost exactly as it did before the process began.
All we were offered was an opportunity to comment on someone else’s answer.
We elect people to represent us. They set priorities, approve policies, question advice and vote on decisions. They also choose what kind of relationship they have with the community.
You cannot represent people unless you are prepared to have conversations with them.
A conversation begins early. Elected representatives explain the problem, share the evidence, listen to the people affected, test assumptions and ask questions. They explain the competing pressures, show what changed because people participated and give clear reasons for the decision they make.
When that relationship breaks down, the damage spreads beyond council chambers.
People who lose trust in those they elected become more willing to listen to someone promising to sweep the whole system aside.
Their hero on the white horse. Someone who says the institutions have failed, the usual rules are useless and only they have the strength or courage to act. They offer simple answers to complex problems, blame a clear enemy and ask people to trust the person rather than the process.
Calling voters ignorant is easier than admitting elected representatives stopped listening. Blaming social media is easier than examining years of predetermined decisions, staged consultation and carefully controlled public meetings.
People turn towards political extremes because they are desperate to feel represented by someone.
Elected representatives have helped create the conditions in which far right groups grow. They cannot dismiss that rise as a failure of intelligence or judgement among voters.
This is also where government loses one of its most useful sources of information. A trusted consultation process allows elected representatives to read the room, hear what people are experiencing, test whether a proposal will achieve its purpose and adjust before damage is done.
Kiama Council’s Draft Community Engagement Strategy 2026 to 2030 adopts the International Association for Public Participation spectrum. It lists co-design, working groups, deliberative forums, consensus conferences and citizens’ juries.
Then it says the empower level will rarely be used because councillors make the final decisions. What do you make of that?
The methods are listed. The strategy does not say when council will use them. Without clear triggers, councillors can continue accepting another survey, another exhibition and another invitation to comment on a proposal already framed by staff.
In my submission, I asked council to identify which decisions will involve collaboration, co-design or deliberative participation.
I asked council to begin those processes early enough for the community to help define the problem.
I asked council to publish the engagement level chosen for each major project and explain why, set clear triggers for citizens’ juries, deliberative forums, working groups and co-design, and report what changed because people participated.
Kiama also has access to expertise through Twyfords, based in this region. Vivien Twyford and her colleagues helped establish the Australasian chapter of the International Association for Public Participation and build the use of the IAP2 model in Australia.
Twyfords helps organisations and communities explore an issue together, understand competing pressures and define the dilemma before developing responses. That experience addresses the gap in the draft strategy.
Council has named the methods. Twyfords understands when to use them, how early the process should begin and how to design engagement that earns trust.
The organisation also knows Kiama, its history, relationships, tensions and different communities of place.
The draft uses the language around consultation while leaving the existing decision-making model intact.
Elected people created this trust crisis.
They can fix it by returning democracy to what it is meant to be, people governing together through representatives who listen, explain, involve and remain accountable for the decisions they make
