Democracy author suggests Citizen Assembly for Queenstown Lakes

Jul 29, 2019

Respected academic, author and journalist Max Rashbrooke arrived in Queenstown today proposing that a Citizen Assembly could solve our perennial dilemma - more growth or less growth? He's in town for two presentations - one in Queenstown tonight and the second in Wanaka on Thursday, August 1st.

Residents in both Queenstown and Wanaka are forever grappling with that one apparently simple question, while at the same time suffering from "survey fatigue" as both the QLDC and the Queenstown Airport Corporation try to figure out their own strategies - apparently on our behalf.

Just so you know that Mr Rashbrooke knows what he is talking about here's his official biography.

"Max Rashbrooke is an author, journalist and academic. He is the author of Government for the Public Good: The Surprising Science of Large-Scale Collective Action, published by Bridget Williams Books (BWB) in September 2018. He is also the author of Wealth and New Zealand, and edited the best-selling Inequality: A New Zealand Crisis, republished in updated form in late 2018, also by BWB. He is a senior associate of the Institute for Governance and Policy Studies at Victoria University of Wellington, and as a journalist has written for outlets in Britain and New Zealand including the Guardian, the National Business Review and Metro. He has twice been the recipient of the Bruce Jesson Senior Journalism Award, and was a 2015 Winston Churchill Fellow."

If you are short of time you can watch Max Rashbrooke's description here of the citizen assembly idea. But we suggest that now, or later, you take ten minutes to watch our full interview that covers all of the issues we are currently discussing on Crux - community engagement, citizen power, local democracy and how we can make our voices heard in a way that is fair, balanced and genuinely representative.

Watch: Max Rashbrooke on a Citizen Assembly for Queenstown Lakes. 50 seconds.