Think Social Cohesion
Have your say
Consultation draft · 16 October to 6 November 2026

The Emerging Social Cohesion Roadmap

On 28 July 2026, 160 invited leaders spent a full day in Parramatta examining the conditions that strengthen or weaken social cohesion. Five clear priorities emerged. This Roadmap proposes one action under each, and asks you to test them.

Released for consultation by SydWest, SSI (Settlement Services International) and SCOA (Settlement Council of Australia)

Complete the surveyRead the five actions

Read and respond in your language →

Five priorities, five proposed actions

Building the conditions for belonging, participation and trust

The Summit demonstrated that Australia does not lack ideas. It lacks a sufficiently shared and accountable framework for action. Every element below is open to amendment through this consultation.

Priority 1

Rights and responsibility

What must the system guarantee?

From the summit

Across the discussions, participants consistently emphasised the importance of rights, obligations and institutional accountability.

Proposed action

Establish a rights and institutional responsibility framework for social cohesion

Name the duty bearer for each obligation, and examine the case for a positive duty to prevent racial discrimination across employers and other institutions. The form of any wider rights instrument remains open. Any legislative response should be developed alongside the relational and place-based approaches the summit identified, not as a substitute for them.

Priority 2

Reach

Who are we failing to reach?

From the summit

A more challenging question, raised independently across four sessions, is how to connect with those who remain outside the reach of existing institutions and programs.

Proposed action

Invest in the local infrastructure of reach

Strengthen local government, neighbourhood organisations, libraries, schools, workplaces and third spaces, while requiring institutions to examine and strengthen where, how and through whom they engage, with particular attention to people not reached through existing networks.

Priority 3

Participation

How do people contribute?

From the summit

Recognition of overseas skills and qualifications was the strongest evidenced proposition of the summit, raised across five sessions without a recorded contradiction.

Proposed action

Unlock skills and remove barriers to participation

Begin with recognition of overseas skills and qualifications, build pathways into civic and community leadership as well as employment, and examine the material conditions that restrict participation.

Priority 4

Accountability

Who owns the outcome?

From the summit

Listening is not complete until people can see what changed because they spoke.

Proposed action

Apply the accountability architecture to every Roadmap commitment

Each commitment carries a named accountable leader, a lived-experience partner, the resources required, a baseline, a measure of progress and a transparent method of reporting, and participants are told what changed because they contributed.

Priority 5

Narrative

What story enables all of this?

From the summit

The summit moved beyond a call for better stories. It identified structural features of the information environment.

Proposed action

Develop and promote an ethical storytelling framework, and a structural response to the information environment

Build the framework on informed and continuing consent, cultural safety, co-authorship, fair recognition and the right to review or withdraw. Alongside it, develop a structural response covering platform incentives, algorithmic amplification and media responsibility, together with a tested public narrative of belonging and contribution.

Fourteen languages and Easy Read

Read and respond in your language

The Roadmap, the questions and the survey are published in each of these languages, and in Easy Read. Choose yours.

Where this Roadmap begins

First Nations sovereignty and truth-telling

Since the summit, the convening partners have proposed that First Nations sovereignty and truth-telling should sit within the conceptual foundation of this Roadmap, rather than among the voices to be added through consultation. The summit itself recorded that First Nations knowledge and leadership needed far more attention than they received on the day.

This proposal will be further developed through respectful engagement with First Nations leaders and organisations before the Roadmap is finalised. Establishing a meaningful governance partnership requires time, trust and genuine collaboration, and cannot be achieved through a short consultation process. The Roadmap will identify the development of this partnership as an early implementation priority.

First Nations organisations who want to be part of that engagement can contact Kyriakos Gold at hello@justgold.net.

Source: proposition developed by the convening partners since the summit. Developed through respectful engagement with First Nations leaders and organisations, not through this survey.

Any Australian framework for social cohesion must begin with recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Peoples of this continent and with an honest account of colonisation, dispossession and continuing sovereignty. Belonging cannot be built on historical amnesia. Truth-telling, self-determination and respectful relationships between First Nations peoples and all those who have subsequently made their lives here are foundational to a shared national future.
Two propositions to hold together

Everyone’s responsibility, and a multicultural nation

Across the Summit, two important and closely related principles emerged, highlighting a tension that must be carefully navigated. Social cohesion belongs to all Australians: it is a whole-of-society responsibility and must not be framed as something migrant and multicultural communities are responsible for producing. At the same time, multiculturalism is a defining national strength that should be embedded more deeply within Australia’s systems, institutions and public life. The work ahead is to hold both: recognising and strengthening Australia’s multicultural character while making clear that responsibility for cohesion cannot be placed on multicultural communities alone.

Broadening this consultation

Whose voices we are seeking

The Summit provided an important foundation for discussion, while recognising that a single day could not capture the full range of perspectives and experiences that shape social cohesion in Australia. Several areas received limited attention or were not adequately represented, including First Nations knowledge and leadership, people with disability, young people, regional and rural communities, smaller faith communities, material and economic conditions, and approaches to evidence and measurement.

The consultation process seeks to address these gaps through targeted written contributions and engagement with people and organisations whose perspectives were underrepresented, including dedicated engagement with First Nations leaders and organisations. We particularly encourage contributions from these groups to ensure the final Roadmap reflects a broader range of experiences, priorities and expertise, and is strengthened by voices that were not sufficiently heard on the day.

The Summit

One day in Parramatta, from diagnosis to accountability

The Think Social Cohesion National Summit was held on 28 July 2026 at Business Western Sydney, 4 Parramatta Square, Parramatta. It was convened by SydWest, SSI and SCOA, with SBS as media partner.

One hundred and sixty invited leaders participated in a full day of keynotes, panels and facilitated contributions. Across the day, the discussion moved from identifying what is not working towards a more practical consideration of what should change, who has responsibility and how progress should be demonstrated. In the earlier sessions, participants were more likely to describe problems and gaps; by the afternoon, a much greater proportion of contributions were proposing mechanisms, including pathways, local initiatives, leadership development, measurement, employer responsibility and stronger community infrastructure.

The Summit did not resolve every question, nor did participants agree on every approach. Important tensions remained around the balance between rights and relationships, community bonds and connection across communities, specialist and mainstream responsibility, and how Australia should navigate difficult questions of speech, naming, identity and disagreement. The Report records those tensions rather than smoothing them into consensus.

Session recordings are released as each is ready. The gallery shows the day in pictures.

160
invited leaders from community, government, policy, research and institutions
5
panels, on system responsibility, community experience, practical action, public narrative and commitment
5
priorities that recurred across the day: rights and responsibility, reach, participation, accountability, narrative
6
elements every commitment should carry, proposed by participants in the closing session
Documents

Read the Roadmap and the Report

The Report is the record of the day. The Roadmap is the instrument we are asking you to test. The ‘what we heard, what changed’ report and the final Roadmap will be published here when the consultation closes.

The Emerging Social Cohesion Roadmap

Consultation draft, 16 October to 6 November 2026. The instrument this consultation is testing: five priorities, five proposed actions, and the questions we are asking you.

PDF · 12 pages
Open

Think Social Cohesion: National Summit Report

Building the conditions for belonging, participation and trust. The record of the day: what we heard, the five priorities, the tensions the Summit left open, and its recommendations.

PDF · 27 pages
Open

Five priorities, five proposed actions

The Roadmap on one page, for sharing and for the room. Published in fifteen languages: open the English version here, or choose a language.

PDF · 1 page · 15 languages
Open

Easy Read Roadmap

The Roadmap and the questions in plain words and short sentences, with the survey on the same page. A draft for review.

Web page · Easy Read
Open
How this consultation runs

Every point you make is logged and answered

A working group of the three convening partners and the Summit Architect will review every response. Every substantive point will be logged in a feedback register and given a documented outcome: adopted, amended, or not adopted, with reasons.

16 October 2026

Consultation opens live at the FECCA conference. The five streams are put to the room. Responses made in the room are submissions.

19 October 2026

The survey goes to Summit participants and the convening partners’ networks.

6 November 2026

Consultation closes.

After consultation

Every respondent who gives an email address receives the ‘what we heard, what changed’ report. The final Roadmap goes to the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion and to government.

Six months after publication

Progress against commitments is assessed and publicly reported through the Roadmap’s accountability framework.

Have your say

What we are asking you

Four questions, and one optional. Answer the ones you can, in the language you prefer. Your response is a formal submission to the consultation.

  1. 1Does each proposed action reflect the problem? What is missing or overstated?
  2. 2Which actions matter most to the people your organisation works with?
  3. 3What should change before the Roadmap is finalised?
  4. 4Whose perspectives does the next stage need to hear?
  5. 5Optional: would your organisation like to contribute to one of the five streams of work, and which one?
The consultation survey

Open until 6 November 2026. Every response is logged in the feedback register and answered in the ‘what we heard, what changed’ report.

Complete the survey

You can read the Roadmap and answer in your language. Written submissions, in any language, can be emailed to hello@justgold.net.