Reclaiming Democracy Together | National Launch | Melbourne Town Hall | 9 May 2026

On 9 May 2026 — the 125th anniversary of the opening of Australia's first Federal Parliament — over 1,700 people gathered at Melbourne Town Hall, with hundreds more joining online, for the national launch of Reclaiming Democracy Together. Democracy is in trouble. Not just in one country, not only in one region. The institutions we built, the trust we cultivated, the quality of our public life — all are under strain. This is a moment that calls for citizens to rethink the foundations of their common life, and to act. Reclaiming Democracy Together is a seven-year national and international initiative, led by Conversation at the Crossroads, to rethink and revitalise democratic life in Australia and beyond. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ SPEAKERS & CONTRIBUTORS ▸ Professor John Keane — political thinker and author of The Life and Death of Democracy ▸ Professor Gillian Triggs — international lawyer and former President, Australian Human Rights Commission ▸ Professor Mark Rose — Gunditjmara leader, educator, and Deputy Vice Chancellor Indigenous, Deakin University ▸ Natalie Kyriacou OAM — environmentalist, social entrepreneur, and founder of My Green World ▸ Wendy Brown — political theorist and author of In the Ruins of Neoliberalism ▸ Tarab Ensemble — classical Arabic music from Syria, Australia, Japan, Palestine, Iran and Egypt ▸ Victorian Trade Union Choir — a cappella choir, giving musical voice to the labour movement and the enduring tradition of songs of solidarity and social justice ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ A note on the audio: Unfortunately, two segments of the recording are difficult to hear: Prof. Wendy Brown’s presentation is inaudible and the first two minutes of the survey report presented by Peter Lewis are missing. However, the charts showing the answers to the survey questions appear clearly on the screen. For this we offer our deepest apologies. A word of explanation is called for: The Town Hall required us to engage their AV partner to manage the livestream and recording of the event, at significant cost. However, critical parts of their systems failed on the day, causing audio problems for both the livestream and parts of the recording. The recording we’re sharing is therefore not of the desired standard. Given the high level of interest, we thought it wise to give everyone access to the recording as it stands. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ LEARN MORE & GET INVOLVED 🌐 https://www.crossroadsconversation.co... 📄 Discussion Paper: https://www.crossroadsconversation.co... 📋 Get Involved: https://www.crossroadsconversation.co... ＄Donate: https://www.crossroadsconversation.co... ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ FOLLOW CONVERSATION AT THE CROSSROADS Instagram:   / conversationatthecrossroads   Facebook:   / conversationatthecrossroads   ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ #ReclaimingDemocracyTogether #Democracy #Australia #CivicEngagement #PublicDialogue #MelbourneTownHall #DemocracyRenewal #ConversationAtTheCrossroads