AUSTRALIA DELIBERATES:
MUSLIMS AND NON-MUSLIMS IN AUSTRALIA

OVERVIEW

On March 2-4 2007, a randomly selected microcosm of the Australian population will come together at Old Parliament House in Canberra to deliberate on the cultural, political and social divides inherent in Australian society between Muslim and Non-Muslim Australians.

Once gathered at Old Parliament House the "Representative Australians" will engage in dialogue with competing experts representing the spectrum of opinions on this topic, based on questions they develop in small group discussions with trained group facilitators. These citizens will have the opportunity and the resources to consider Australia's cultural diversity in a comprehensive, systematic way. As in previous Australian Deliberative Polls, we anticipate that parts of the weekend events will be broadcast on national/regional television; either live or in taped and edited form. After the weekend of deliberations, the participants are asked their opinions on the range of issues that were deliberated upon. The resulting opinions represent the conclusions the Australian public would reach, if given the opportunity, time and resources to become more informed and more engaged by the topic.

The main goal for this "Australia Deliberates - Muslims and Non-Muslims in Australia"  Deliberative Poll, as for all previous Deliberative Polls, is to facilitate the informed voice of a representative sample of Australian citizens. This DP will focus on the various aspects of the cultural, social and political differences in Australia, including what it means to be Australian, how Muslim and Non-Muslim peoples within Australia might harmoniously live together, and the role of the Government in facilitating racial and cultural harmony - with respect to policies on immigration, education and employment. The results have recommending force for the nation. The informed voice of this microcosm of the Australian population could then inform Government policy on any future changes to policy on immigration, education, employment and multiculturalism.

This Deliberative Poll will be the culmination of a series of "roundtable-deliberations" being conducted with several Muslim groups in Australia. These focused deliberations will combine surveys with focus group style sessions which will be conducted throughout November 2006, similar to those "regional deliberations" that were conducted prior to the national Deliberative Poll on Reconciliation, conducted by IDA in February 2001. We are hopeful about the potential power of these deliberations to shed light on the experiences of Muslims living in Australia.

As with previous Australian Deliberative Polls, this project will be a collaboration between Issues Deliberation Australia / America, the Hawke Research Institute at the University of South Australia, the Center for Australian Studies at the University of Texas, as well as students and faculty from the Australian National University. This Deliberative Poll will recruit over 100 volunteers to assist with administration, logistics, liaison support, transport and hospitality services. Other universities who have expressed interest for this particular Deliberative Poll include: Monash University, University of Western Sydney, University of Western Australia and Edith Cowan University, Griffith University and the Swinburne University of Technology.

One of the exciting prospects for this Deliberative Poll is a cross-country collaboration study between Issues Deliberation Australia / America and the architects of the European Social Survey, the Australian Social Survey and the American Social Survey. The Deliberative Poll survey asks multiple questions around the issues of refugees, assimilation, religion and cultural differences etc.  The data collected during this Deliberative Poll will parallel the European Social Survey thus enabling comparative analyses of the Australian population with the populations of each of the countries in the European Union, both individually and collectively (as well as the United States). Collaboration with the Australian Survey of Social Attitudes conducted by the Australian National University also means a comparison of trends of opinions within Australia on several sub-topics, for example, immigration and religion. Founder and director of Britain's National Centre for Social Research and lead investigator of the European Social Survey, Professor Roger Jowell, has confirmed his attendance at the Deliberative Poll in March 2007.

As with all previous Deliberative Polls the Final Report will include key recommendations for policy and service providers as defined by the Representative Australians. We envisage that this Deliberative Poll will form a prototype for other countries / regions where racial / cultural divisions are ever widening and creating hostile environments.