Rethinking Australian democracy as a deliberative system

This paper examines the relationship between Australia’s Indigenous and settler colonial systems of democracy through the lens of deliberative systems theory. It suggests that the ongoing effects of colonialism have rendered Indigenous democracy largely invisible causing a harmful divide in Australia’s democracies. A pluralist conception of democracy is necessary to understand the disconnect between the two systems, evidenced by a striking absence of literature on Australian Indigenous democracy. In response, this paper first theorizes a conceptual framework of a concurrent deliberative system, then describes the Indigenous deliberative system and the colonial system’s efforts to eliminate Indigenous democracy. Against this theoretical and empirical background, it considers whether the recent referendum for an Indigenous Voice to Parliament was just a colonial legacy or represented a pathway towards a shared postcolonial democratic future.