Citizen Assemblies for a Democratic, Post-Growth Future with Peter Tait

In this episode of PGAP, host Michael Bayliss welcomes special guest Peter Tait, convenor of the Canberra Alliance for Participatory Democracy. Peter discusses the critical importance of citizen participation in the democratic process and how citizen assemblies have great potential in building momentum on issues such as planned Degrowth and population policy.

Peter Tait has been a General Practitioner for over 40 years, 30 of them in Aboriginal health in Central Australia. He was 2007 RACGP General Practitioner of the Year and 2017 Public Health Association Australia Sidney Sax medalist. He teaches Population Health at ANU.

You can find out more about the Canberra Alliance for Participatory Democracy HERE. Peter represented CAPaD at the New Economy Network Australia (NENA) conference in 2025.

Did you like this episode and want to explore more PGAP episodes? We recommend the premiere episode for this season with Marcus Champ, representing Public Money, Public Good, who also presented at the NENA conference. Or listen to the NENA conference coordinator, Tiyana Jovanovic, HERE. For a slightly older episode, our interview with Mark Diesendorf explored issues referred to in this episode such as state capture of government policy.

For further reading, you may be interested in Michael’s blog article for Population Media Centre, which argues why large and rapidly growing populations can dilute democracy. This is explored further in my article on The Overpopulation Project: “The Planet Cannot Hold the Weight of 8.2 billion Narratives.” During the interview, Peter explains the concept of Sociocracy and its capacity to achieve consensus even with large and disperse populations.

In the episode introduction, Michael reflects on his recent presentation on Degrowth at Perth’s Curtin University. Aiming to engage students emotionally with Degrowth as a moral imperative, the feedback was hugely encouraging, as the below photo hopefully attests.

Michael at back centre

PGAP will be on a break over the next couple of months. In the meantime, Michael is offering a free Sustainable Population Mug, for every review of PGAP on Apple Podcast. All you need to do – after writing the review – is contact PGAP on our CONTACT FORM and Michael will respond on his return. In the down time, we also encourage you to engage at least one person on the issue of Degrowth, please write to us and let us know how your conversation went.

All views, opinions and past legacies of PGAP guests are exclusively theirs and do not necessarily reflect those of PGAP or Sustainable Population Australia.