Hi, I’m Stilgherrian. You may know me from my personal website or my recent writing in Crikey. Or you may know me from my previous media life in Adelaide. You may know me in other ways. Or maybe you don’t know me at all. Whatever. Hello. Let me tell you what we’re doing here…
The Australia 2020 Summit is over, and the Initial Report is online. Here’s what it has to say about Governance. My comments will come in due course.
I suspect I’m like many people in spending Monday morning mapping out the week ahead. I’m therefore disappointed to discover that applications for media accreditation for the Australia 2020 Summit have already closed.
Applications must have come from “legitimate media organisations” too. This wouldn’t necessarily have been a problem for me, and I do understand that there’s probably limited space. Still, it reinforces the quaint idea that “the media” is about established “organisations” doing things in the established way. The idea that an individual could attend, observe and report their observations to the world without being part of a “legitimate media organisation” seems beyond them.
Now this doesn’t mean I can’t still do something this weekend. It only means I don’t have physical access to the venue — unless I wangle some post-deadline approval, which in principle should be possible since plenty of the delegates didn’t go through the correct application process either. But it does mean I’ll need to be more creative. Stay tuned.
The Australia 2020 Summit framework has lumped discussions of our internet and broadband infrastructure in with “the economy”. Since I’m supposedly a geek of some sort, I felt compelled to write a submission for this topic area as well.
While it’s technically outside the brief of this website, here it is anyway…
Some famous bloke once apologised for writing a long letter because he didn’t have time to write a short one. That’s how I felt yesterday while writing a submission for the Australia 2020 Summit.
For various reasons I didn’t have much time available. Yet I’ve said so much about still believing this to be an important summit — despite the plentiful shortcomings — that I felt obliged to write something. In 500 words or less.
Given that I didn’t have time for a well-researched, pithy submission, I chose to write from the heart. This is what emerged…
As I’m reading through recent news reports on the Australia 2020 Summit today, I’m been struck by how few people seem to be able to think about Australia’s future — and think big about Australia’s future — rather than just view the world through their own narrow prism of self-interest.
I’ve written elsewhere how the Summit seems to have brought out the whingers who complain that their interest isn’t specifically listed in the topic titles. Today I’m wading through news reports which boast, as the Preston Leader does, that “nine Derebin residents” will be going to Canberra. Similarly, “A strong contingent of gays, lesbians and equal rights advocates has been chosen,” cheers Queensland Pride.
I’ve also written about who I think should be selected, on the basis of talent not quota-filling Nevertheless, the steering committee has magically arranged for 15% of their nominees to be female.
Illness prevented me gettign to BarCampSydney 3 on the weekend, so I’m still undecided about what I’ll actually be doing for the Australia 2020 Summit weekend. However my main focus will be on writing, because submissions close at 5pm today, AEST.
To prevent summit delegates being overwhelmed, there’s a 500 word limit — and also a ban on photographs and other images. Sometimes a diagram could explain things much more effectively, but not this time.
Yesterday the government released background papers for each of the 10 subject areas for the Australia 2020 Summit, including one for governance.
They’ve been summarised and analysed by Canberra Times correspondents Peter Martin, Danielle Cronin, Andrew Fraser, Emma Macdonald, David McLennan and Ross Peake.
Some of the papers are notable for what they omit. The discussion paper on Australia’s economy includes no mention of taxation. And Japan, the world’s third biggest economy and Australia’s biggest customer, has been left off of the graph showing the evolution of the global economic landscape. The US, China and the UK are on it, just as they are on the Prime Minister’s present overseas tour…
Here’s their summary of the Governance topic’s background paper…
As I said in my introduction, I haven’t decided exactly what I’m doing with this website. But I have decided how I’ll figure that out.
I’m spending the next couple of days sorting out my “paying” business Prussia.Net. By the weekend I’ll know how much time I can allocate to this site in the fortnight before the Summit.
Since I am, after all, an Internet and media geek I should probably use those skills in some way. Lo and behold! There just happens to be a gathering of geeks in Sydney this weekend.
I’ll (un)organise a session at BarCampSydney 3 on Sunday to plan out what I’ll do — and what anyone who wants to join me will do. However I’ve already had a few thoughts…
A lot of my media experience is in broadcasting, and I’ve done a lot of outside broadcasts, so I’m toying with the idea of podcasting or streaming media of some sort. Last night I played with some very cool software tools which turn a Mac into a live TV studio, for instance, so technically this isn’t complicated. It’s all just a matter of organisation…
The key issues, as I see them this morning, are:
- What can we do that’s (1) sufficiently different from mainstream media coverage and other existing activities that it’s worthwhile and (2) makes use of our skills as a group? Whoever this group is.
- For everyone who wants to be involved, how much time can they contribute and what are their skills?
- What will we need to do this, in terms of the additional skills which we don’t have, hardware, software, bandwidth, transport, accommodation and whatever else we’ll need?
- Who will we get to pay for it?
- What else?
Remember, the focus is the future of Australia’s Governance. While the other nine subject areas are important too, my specific focus for this project is on governance and democracy. However that doesn’t mean that other teams can’t do similar projects for the other subject areas.
I’m not sure what my next steps are, but I daresay that’ll emerge over the next 48 hours.
These are the 100 “best and brightest” who were chosen to discuss the future of Australian Governance at the Australia 2020 Summit.
I’ve linked them to their Wikipedia pages, if any. At some later stage I’ll link the others to whatever reference material I can find. It’d be nice if some people volunteered to write a one-sentence summary of each person — any takers?
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