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Canberrans will get greater control over how money in the 2019 city services budget is spent, after the Barr government agreed to pilot a program where the power is put back in the hands of the people. Greens crossbencher Caroline Le Couteur called on the ACT government to allow a panel of ordinary people to control one-fifth of the $356 million city services budget as part of a 'participatory budget'. Based on successful schemes run by Melbourne and Geraldton councils, Ms Le Couteur denied it was a token gesture and said involving people in the budget process would restore their faith in democracy. "It's clear people not just in the ACT but over Australia and the world have less trust in our democracy and are disaffected. We need to look at ways we can enable to feel they have a say in what happens in our community so they trust the process so we have a better outcome at the end of the process," Ms Le Couteur said. "I'm not trying to talk anti-representative democracy, I think that has served us well but it's clear people are getting dissatisfied and it's also clear our budgets are getting more and more complicated. "It's unreasonable to think 25 MLAs are the fount of all wisdom. We're not, we need to listen to all voices and this is an experiment, this is a pilot to find out how it's going to work." Chief Minister Andrew Barr amended Ms Le Couteur's motion to remove the amount of money the panel could control, and said that would be determined in later discussions. Her motion came one day after the government announced its first citizen's jury would be assembled in coming weeks to look at changing the ACT's compulsory third-party insurance. "We'll take the experiences of the citizens' jury on CTP in hand and consider those in the context of participatory budgeting," Mr Barr said. He said the citizen's budget would not be decided by those who organised the largest number of submissions. "This year we had 400 responses to government consultation around the budget and Canberra's ice sports community were very organised and put in a lot of submissions," Mr Barr said. "Their number one priority for the whole city was a new ice skating rink and I think that reflects a very strongly held view from the ice sports community and certainly we're looking to develop a new ice sports facility fo Canberra but I think a broader view of all the infrastructure priorities fo the city would probably not have an ice skating rink as number one." Mr Barr said ultimately the parliament would still have to pass whatever the citizen's panel decided on, and the city services minister would have to assume responsibility for it. "I think we have the most scrutinised $5.5 billion of public spending in the country, possibly the world, given the time that goes into scrutinising every last dollar of expenditure," Mr Barr said. Ms Le Couteur was confident a citizen's budget would pass the parliament, as it came straight from the people. Details of the pilot will be discussed over the next 18 months. The ACT government is expected to pass this year's budget on Thursday afternoon.

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