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Democracy is failing the planet

As the challenges facing the Earth grow in scope and complexity, there is a nagging concern that the world’s democracies will fail to respond as they should.

Bound to negotiate between competing interests and with a tendency to adopt the ‘lowest common denominator’, critics argue that the democracies have failed to prevent major economic disruption, have waged war in pursuit of their interests and have taken more than their fair share of the planet’s resources.

Despite this, there is an enduring assumption that democracy should be preferred to all other political systems. But is this assumption anchored in a dangerous illusion?

Poll results

At each IQ² debate the audience is polled on the topic, both before and after the debate takes place. Here are the results for this debate:

	Pre-debate poll	Post-debate poll
For:	36%	39%
Undecided:	36%	10%
Against:	28%	51%

Watch the video

Coming soon.

Speakers

For:

• Luca Belgiorno-Nettis AM is Joint Managing Director Transfield Holdings and Founder of The New Democracy Foundation, researching new forms of government. Belgiorno-Nettis holds a Bachelor of Architecture (UNSW) and a Graduate Diploma in Urban Estate Management (UTS). He is Director of a number of not-for-profit boards and committees including Chairman of the Biennale of Sydney, UTS and the University of Western Sydney. In 2007 he was awarded the Chancellor’s Award for Excellence at UTS for his contribution to Sydney’s culture.
• Clive Hamilton is Professor of Public Ethics and holds the Vice-Chancellor's Chair at Charles Sturt University. He was the Founder and for fourteen years the Executive Director of The Australia Institute, a public interest think tank. He is well known in Australia as a public intellectual and for his contributions to public policy debate. His extensive publications include writings on climate change policy, overconsumption, welfare policy and the effects of commercialisation. Amongst other titles he is the author of Affluenza and Requiem for a Species.
• Cheryl Kernot is Director of Social Business at the Centre for Social Impact at UNSW and is Chair of the Fair Trade Association of A&NZ. One of the National Trust's 100 National Living Treasures, Cheryl was Leader of the Australian Democrats in the mid-1990s and became a Labor Shadow Minister for three years. Her policy interests have been in social justice and social structural reform. She was Program Director at the Said Business School at Oxford University and Director of Learning at the School for Social Entrepreneurs in London.

Against:

• Professor John Keane is Professor of Politics at the University of Sydney and at the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin (WZB). He is the Director of the recently founded Sydney Democracy Initiative (SDI). During his many years in Britain, The Times ranked him one of the country's leading political thinkers and a writer whose work has 'world-wide importance'. The Australian Broadcasting Commission recently described him as “one of the great intellectual exports from Australia". His Life and Death of Democracy was short-listed for the 2010 Non-Fiction Prime Minister's Literary Award. www.johnkeane.net
• Martine Letts is Deputy Director of the Lowy Institute for International Policy. She is former Secretary General (CEO) of Australian Red Cross and served as Australian Ambassador to Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay, Deputy Head of Mission and Australian Deputy Permanent Representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna and as an adviser to Foreign Minister Gareth Evans from 1992 to 1994. Letts specialised in arms control and disarmament on postings in Geneva and Vienna and acted as Policy Officer in Department of Foreign Affairs & Trade. She was a member of the Advisory Board of the International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation & Disarmament (ICNND) and is a member of the Australian National University Council.
• Professor Steven Schwartz is the Vice-Chancellor of Macquarie University and a former Vice Chancellor of Brunel University in the UK and of Murdoch University in Perth, Western Australia. His academic research spanned clinical psychology, psychiatry, public health and medical decision making and he was named one of the 100 most cited researchers in his field. Professor Schwartz is a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors and the Australian Institute of Management. He is a member of the Fulbright Commission and the advisory boards of the Asia Society, the Global Foundation and the Centre for Independent Studies.

Chair:

Dr Simon Longstaff has a PhD in Philosophy from Cambridge. Prior to becoming the inaugural Executive Director of St James Ethics Centre in 1991, Dr Longstaff worked in the Northern Territory in the Safety Department of BHP subsidiary, GEMCO, lectured at Cambridge University and consulted to the Cambridge Commonwealth and Overseas Trusts. His book Hard Cases, Tough Choices was published in 1997. Dr Longstaff was inaugural President of the Australian Association for Professional & Applied Ethics and is a Fellow of the World Economic Forum. He is Chairman of Woolworths Limited Corporate Responsibility Panel and AMP Capital Socially Responsible Investment Advisory Committee and serves as Member on a number of Board Committees.