I have been involved in several consultations run by the ACT Governemnt.

The best features were those in Consultations run by Consultants who gave participants the opportunity to express their views equally. The best Consultation was run by a solicitor who gave equal opportunity to each participant and did not give more weight to views expressed by Government and NGO employees.

Didn't work:-

One Consultation of 3 hours duration was frustrating because the facilitator took up 70% of the time "educating" participants about "how to communicate"! This was a waste of valuable time. One Carer had to leave because his available time had run out.

Consultations run by Social Workers are less valuable because they tend to monopolise the discussion and patronise other participants. When Social Workers are participants they tend to demean the views of Consumers and Carers. I believe that this is because they are Coordinators of programs and wish to employ cheaper and less qualified staff. Occupational therapists as participants also seem to do the same.

Lack of adequate breaks during Consultations and Consultations above ground level also make access difficult.

If Consultations are required to include consumers of Health services, it could be taken into account that 70% of Mental Health Consumers are smokers. This makes continuity of discussion difficult.

"Consultation" angers and alienates people if it is not genuine. The ACT Government never wanted our views about schools, only introduced "consultation" because of the outcry, never provided the information that the community asked for to inform its opinions and worst of all the Government's response to the consultation was printed before the closing date for consultation and was so blandly worded that it clearly ignored public input. The Stanhope Government clearly did not trust its citizens to come up with answers it would accept. It KNEW that it knew better than the parents, teachers and citizens who actually ran the schools.

At exactly the same time the Victorian ALP Government trusted the public suffiently that when it decided for budget reasons that it needed fewer schools and wanted to trial superschools it offered defined regions the opportunity to get new investment in return for offering up schools for closure. The Minister said from the outset that the Government would NOT determine which schools would close. I was involved in the process in Bendigo where my daughter attended a primary school that volunteered to be closed. It was a great school loved by parents, staff and students, but the Bendigo community vigorously engaged the process constructively, tossed around the pros and cons, floated suggestions (my daughter's school was an obvious candidate for expansion of the adjacent Uni campus) and AGREED to the outcomes. Yes, there was some acrimony, but all questions, accusations and doubts were openly and specifically addressed. That was real consultation.

Recently I discovered in the Neighbourhood Watch newsletter that the ONLY opportunity to comment on proposals for the grounds of my local closed school, a matter I am actively involved in and for which my details have been provided repeatedly, was at a distant venue the next evening. This was an ideal topic to letterbox the neighbourhood, email those who had registered their interest or get the existing community networks to spread the word (we still have strong links from the school campaign). Why did the ACT Government not use any of these methods? I remain convinced that they only believe in token consultation and they will only convince me otherwise when they bend over backwards to prove otherwise. It comes down to trust and after they failed to give those doing the work in the community a chance to demonstrate how we could respond to a challenge, and just imposed their solution on us, I no longer trust them. That was a huge fall for a government I used to sing the praises of.

I oppose limiting consultation to the internet because that excludes lots of peoples. There should be multiple opportunities, preferably by offering the concerned community the opportunity to devise its preferred outcome for itself rather than pick from some exotic consultant's ill-advised options.

I have been involved in a number of ACT consultation processes. One which was relatively successful was the 21st century town meeting on whether the ACT should build a new dam to increase water supplies and the one which was not successful was the consultation on the closure of Melrose Primary school, my local primary school which my children attended.

The water 21st century town meeting was good because it provided information and a method for ensuring people were able to express their views and see that they were considered. It involved having about 7 or 8 people around a table, with a facilitator and somebody recording the discussions on a computer linked to a central coordinator compiling the results coming in. Its main shortcoming was that the time provided for that consultation was inadequate and the process was too rushed.

The school consultation process was poor and frustrating as there was no opportunity for participants to deliberate together, to consider real options and to feel that their views were really considered. It was just a public meeting where comments were made and a brief survey of views on paper collected.