Abstract

Australia's civic participation is declining, according to our current measurement tools. Volunteering rates are down, engagement in public forums and consultations is inconsistent, and membership rates in organisations are lower than a decade ago. While young people report sharply lower senses of belonging, and Australia’s national standardised NAPLAN Civics and Citizenship exams show declining understanding of how our government works, more than half of Australians report feeling their voices are not heard in key public decisions. Yet across our lives, from our first time voting or joining a political party to our first time participating in a school parent association or a local sports club, to when we first voice our opinion on a local development plan or join community organisations, we are active in different ways and at different points. Together, these make up our civic life journey.

Programs and democratic processes exist to enable civic participation, but they are often siloed or narrowly focused on specific activities at specific points of time in a person’s life. In a recent paper from the Australian Resilient Democracy Network (ARDN), Andrew Mycock and Brenton Prosser proposed a shift in how we design and build engagement across our life course: moving from a patchwork of disconnected points of engagement, to a coordinated tapestry that provides access to participation opportunities at all ages – and in ways that are most meaningful at different moments in our lives.

This paper summarises a recent hackathon, convened by ARDN and OSC, to test the practical value of the framework in looking at how policies, specifically those seeking to strengthen social cohesion and democratic resilience, could approach civic life from a life course perspective. The hackathon starts by assessing what we currently know and what we need to know about Australians’ civic life journeys, from civic education in schools to major life transition points, to how we engage once we stop working. The hackathon brought together 24 researchers, data specialists, and policy practitioners from 15 institutions to map available data, identify gaps, and generate priority directions for what comes next.

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