When Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced the Australia 2020 Summit I was quietly enthused. After a decade of Howard’s backward-looking short-term thinking we were actually going to look to the future. My thoughts riffed off those of Maxine McKew and Mark Pesce and I boldly proclaimed Australia, let the Enlightenment begin!

I was particularly excited because one of the discussion panels was going to tackle the very nature of Australia’s democracy.

I’d recently read the book Watching Brief: reflections on human rights, law, and justice by human rights lawyer Julian Burnside, which highlighted precisely how John “Miserable Toad” Howard had eroded basic human rights. Not only was there a chance to undo the Toad’s work, we could actually move our nation’s democracy beyond our clunky steam-driven Federation-era Constitution and embrace the possibilities of the Internet Age.

The full description of the topic area was promising:

The Australian Government is committed to greater access to freedom of information, effective parliamentary reform and removing as many dysfunctional dimensions to the Australian Federation as possible. The Government is also examining ways in which Australians can increasingly deliberate in the making of government policy through a range of mechanisms, including community cabinets, as a part of a commitment to contemporary democracy.

The Australia 2020 Summit will examine:

• How best to implement an effective an agenda of open government which best balances the legitimate requirements of the media and the confidentiality requirements of cabinet government in the Westminster system
• How best to engaged the community in government decision making
• What forms of Federation reform are appropriate for the future to maximise outcomes for the economy and the community
• How to ensure the future viability of local government operations and infrastructure provision.

I was inspired. I wanted to be part of this. I sent off my application. And then the disappointment set in.

Lobbyists for specific sectors started whinging about lack of representation. Kevin Rudd’s political management of the lead-up — invitations to journalists and random members of the public via talkback radio — led to serious disillusionment in some quarters.

Still, I remained optimistic. I countered the pessimists with an appeal to Australia’s national character:

I don’t think we should write off the Summit just yet. These are Australians we’re talking about. If the Steering Committee tries to shut down true ideas-generation, I reckon our “best and brightest” will fight back with vigour.

Even when I discovered that Miranda Devine counted as “best and brightest” I maintained my positivism.

I still believe that there’s value in this Australia 2020 Summit. After all, we have 1000 people gathered for a specific focus, and the media spotlight will be upon them. Their dialogue has yet to begin, but already the conversation is rippling through the community — and I’ll point to all that in a later post.

I have yet to decide specifically what I’ll do with the Summit but tonight, at least, I’ll start the journey to Canberra metaphorically if not geographically. Even though I wasn’t selected as a delegate, I’ll still focus my thoughts and energies on that weekend, and on the themes of Topic 9.

This website is where I’ll tell the story of that journey — perhaps adding the stories of people I meet along the way, and hopefully your stories too. I’ll spend some time at BarCampSydney 3 discussing how technology and government interact. I’m hoping that’ll help shape this website into a “new media” [ugh] operation that does something with the Australia 2020 Summit and then beyond.

Gosh. How does all that sound?

Ambition

The participants of the Australian Governance stream set forth the ambition of a new Australian republic — one which clearly enshrines and upholds the rights, responsibilities, and reciprocal relationships of both citizen and government.

This is a vision of governance in which the rights of all Australians are recognised, their civic participation is supported and strengthened, the government is rigorously held accountable and open with a strong independent media, our current federal system is fixed, and the public service excels.

Priority Themes

A top priority in this stream was the need for an Australian republic, to be enabled by a proposed two-stage process, with wide community involvement and ownership of the outcome.

The group also expressed strong support for a statutory Bill or Charter of Rights, with minority support for a parliamentary Charter. They stressed the importance of Indigenous involvement in this process — as an integral part of the path to reconciliation.

Much was made of the need to fix federalism to create a modern Australian federation.

This stream also discussed the importance of a rigorously accountable and open government, and a strong independent media. Participants expressed a desire to revitalise the accountability of the Executive to Parliament, as well as to the public. In this they stressed the role of a stronger and more open Freedom of Information framework.

Another major theme was the need to strengthen the participation of Australians in their governance: a revolution in community and government interaction through grassroots and non-traditional community engagement, as well as more formal electoral processes.

Finally, the group highlighted the need for a strong and talented public sector workforce to enable these aspirations and ideas by 2020.

Top Ideas

1. Introduce an Australian republic, via a two-stage process, with Stage 1 ending ties with the UK while retaining the Governor-General’s titles and powers for five years. Stage 2: Identifying new models after extensive and broad consultation.
2. Instigate an overhaul of Federalism, including for example:
   • A constitutional convention to define roles, responsibilities and structures of our Federal system;
   • A National Cooperation Commission to oversee and recommend on intergovernmental agreement.
3. Open access to Government information (complete reform of FOI laws) and strengthen protections of free press in order to facilitate a more open and publicly accountable government.
4. Introduce innovative mechanisms to increase civic participation, collaborative governance to strengthen civic engagement and trust, facilitate “deliberative democracy” and strengthen citizen engagement. For example:
   • Universal automatic enrolment and re-enrolment of eligible voters;
   • Exploit broadband and emerging IT technologies to enable new forms of citizen involvement
   • Community Parliaments;
   • An online Citizens’ Cabinet; and
   • A public television channel with first-hand access to policy information and debate.
5. Encourage excellence in our public sector by expediting issues of remuneration, flexibility and mobility within the Australian Public Service, supported by a Commission of Inquiry. Facilitate and incentivise the transition of top Australians between the public and private sectors.

Pre-Summit Submissions

The overarching theme in many of the 800+ public submissions to the Australian Governance stream was greater civic participation for all Australians, and the accessibility, transparency and open dialogue with government that are required to achieve this goal.

Submissions suggested innovative ways that the Australian government and its people could seek out a new dialogue, including community forums, summits, regular polling of community views, e-voting, and a comprehensive Commonwealth government web portal (“Community Cabinet”) which shares information about upcoming decisions, encourages and hosts submissions from ordinary Australians, and brings together publicly available and easily searchable government reports and data.

One enabler of this open dialogue is greater freedom of government information to the public and to the press — facilitated by a clear government commitment and a stronger FOI framework. Specific ideas included ‘plain language’ budget and government papers, a Commonwealth Information Commissioner, and ‘shield laws’ to protect journalists from revealing their sources. Another innovative idea to encourage open sharing of information in the wider community was to make government funding of certain public or research projects conditional on providing open public access to reports and data.

Many submissions supported a re-evaluation of our 3-tiered government system. Some submissions strongly supported the empowerment of local governments — for example their Constitutional recognition, or direct funding grants from the Commonwealth to local governments for innovative community programs. Some submissions suggested a more simple 2-tiered system, abolishing either State or local government. Other suggestions for structural and electoral reform included many submissions about an Australian republic, fixed Federal terms, and tighter control over private donations to political campaigns.

Another major theme was the human rights agenda — with many submissions supporting an Australian Bill or Charter of Rights either in the Constitution or in legislation. This included discussion of legal reform (e.g. legal enshrinement of basic freedoms) and structural safeguards (such as government review mechanisms and a fair and transparent justice system). Many submissions stressed the need to continue vigorously supporting the role of women and Indigenous people in Australian governance.

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.

While it’s technically outside the brief of this website, here it is anyway…

Broadband: It’s about symmetry, not speed

This topic’s background paper already shows that the speed of Australia’s broadband internet falls woefully behind OECD leaders. Existing government plans are only playing catch-up, delivering what Japan, France and Korea already have.

Raw speed is not the only factor. Just as important are three other factors:

1. The symmetry of the connection — that is, the ability to upload data to the internet as fast as it can be downloaded.
2. The latency — which can loosely be explained as the time between a user sends data and its arrival at its destination.
3. The price, especially the price of the data transmitted in each direction.

Items 2 and 3 are engineering and market problems. However the first item, symmetry, is critical to moving into the networked age.

Most current broadband connections are asymmetrical, with faster download speeds than uploads. For example, ADSL2+ technology might have download speeds exceeding 12 megabits per second, but upload speeds are only 1 megabit per second.

This builds into the very network itself the idea that internet users are “consumers” of data which is generated elsewhere — that the internet delivers “content” which is created by a relatively few large entities.

Yet the key benefit of a networked society is collaboration. And to collaborate effectively, everybody needs to be able to send high-bandwidth data — whether that’s video, audio or shared data of some kind we have yet to imagine — even if it’s only to an audience numbering in single digits.

As Chris Anderson’s book The Long Tail makes clear, when the cost of distributing information plummets then it becomes possible for micro-markets to appear. An idea no longer needs a budget of millions of dollars and a correspondingly large audience to have relevance. Mass production turns into mass participation and mass customisation.

However the existing media and communications empires are built around the industrial-age idea of centralised control and delivering a uniform product to everybody. They will resist any attempt to democratise production and distribution. They will tell you that only vast national organisations can deliver reliable network infrastructure, when past experience should tell us that they precisely fail to do that.

Regional and local organizations could well do a better job of connecting communities — and those communities could then simply cross-connect to create a national network.

The technology already exists. It’s not a technical question. It’s a question of how to best structure an organisation, or an industry, to deliver the most flexible and cost-effective network infrastructure for Australian communities.

Small and medium-sized business usually respond faster and more flexibly to market demands. Bloated national and trans-national corporations may not necessarily be the answer.

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…

Managing continual, rapid change with a clear framework of values

To say that our society’s pace of change is rapidly accelerating is almost a cliché — yet it’s the truth. Young people now entering the workforce have never known a time without the internet or mobile phones — unless they recall their infancy.

Children entering school today will emerge in 2020 taking for granted the technology they’ll grow up with: mobile, high-speed data networks; pocket-sized devices which allow them to converse with anyone, anywhere, in sound and vision as well as words. Their media and political diet will be moderated as much by friends and acquaintances as by “professional” politicians and media producers — perhaps even more so.

And the generation following them will be comfortable in a world which few of us can even imagine.

It’s clear that our steam-aged constitution and parliamentary institutions will not cope.

Already young people (and some not so young) create and manage social networks with a speed that’s breathtaking. This will become the norm some time next week, or so it’ll feel. Australia’s democracy must grasp these tools which are already transforming our world — not tentatively, but with bold confidence.

If we are to experiment, our experiments must look forward not a year or three, but a decade or two. Otherwise the lessons of the experiment will be outdated before it’s even finished.

To cope in any rapidly-changing environment, two elements are essential:

1. A clear understanding of the aims and the rules of engagement.
2. A clear, flexible mechanism for evaluating our progress and adapting our methods to new conditions.

Constitutions are hard to change. If we are to update Australia’s constitution — and if this Summit ends without recommending a comprehensive review then, I believe, it will have failed — then we must ensure that our core values are locked in for another century. They must include the fundamental human and civil rights which Australia has already recognised internationally but has failed to enshrine in law.

A so-called “bill of rights” is essential. I should be written in clear and unassailable language. Anyone who resists writing into law what we’ve already agree to as fundamental rights can only intend to deny those rights to someone.

To protect those rights, and to ensure that our democracy continues to reflect them, we need a mechanism to continually check that they are not eroded. That implies some permanent institution, one whose own existence is guaranteed and well-protected against any potential political interference in the future.

In a more rapidly-changing future our lawmakers and administrators will need ways of working more rapidly. A formal institution would help ensure that we don’t trade off our rights for temporary expediency, either accidentally or as the result of incipient despotism.

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 51% of their nominees to be female.

There’s also a heavy bias towards professional academics and professional politicians in the 884-personal list put forward.

“884?” I hear you ask? Isn’t it 1000 of our “best and brightest”? Well no. Though this wasn’t a secret, it wasn’t heavily publicised: space has been reserved for state premiers and various federal politicians.

And, as sociologist Mark Bahnisch noted in New Matilda, the fact that some delegates didn’t have to go through the nomination process creates a two-tier summit:

[A] number of the participants named didn’t have to go through the nomination process or submit a 500 word screed on their ideas for Australia. Rather, some summiteers were tapped on the shoulder by the secretariat in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet after having been picked directly by the summit steering committee. This lack of transparency hasn’t been publicly acknowledged, although some of the steering committee did (perhaps unwisely) allude to it early on.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with such an approach, but the sleight of hand involved in concealing it is deeply worrying. It suggests that there are two tiers of participants — those whom the Government and the steering committee really think are the best and brightest, and those who took the thing seriously but are in effect relegated to the second tier.

Bahnisch is also rightly concerned that a group of 100 usually can’t produce quality outcomes, and that the background papers will shape debate.

Those who will have the real power to shape the outcomes of the 2020 summit will be those who are in charge of setting the agenda, and cherry-picking the submissions to support working papers which will shape discussion. It may well be the case that the communiqué could be written before anyone even lands in Canberra. We may yet be surprised by the outcome, but we shouldn’t be surprised if the 2020 summit produces no surprises at all.

Sadly, after reading Peter Timmins’ comments on the papers for Topic 9, I tend to agree:

The set of 13 PowerPoints (PDF 260KB) includes one (9) on Freedom of Information that unfortunately does not provide basic information about debate on this topic. It consists of a claim that “granting rates” are 95% for personal information and 89% for other information, with the only qualification on this rosy situation in the form of three sentences from two court judgments about accountability and secrecy, and an unsourced claim that 70% of Queensland applicants were satisfied with the FOI process.

Nothing here about the stack of reports that have identified the problems in this area as an enduring culture of secrecy; lack of leadership within government; inadequacies in the law; technical legalistic responses; long delays; high cost and slow review mechanisms…

Then, in what will be a surprise to most government watchers, there is a table [on slide 8] that lists Australia as 12th when ranked against other countries in terms of “transparency of government policy making”. You have to ask yourself exactly what is being measured here when countries not renowned for democratic practices such as Singapore, are rated one, Hong Kong five and Malaysia 16. My guess from the footnote is that it is a score of something to do with monetary policy based on a survey of business leaders, but to put this forward as a positive general indicator of the trust in Australian public institutions is a bit of a stretch.

With all of the controversy about the role of the public service, the background slide (10) on this topic is devoted solely to how difficult it may be to recruit sufficient public servants in future.

It really makes we wonder what my role should be here. I mean, what my role really should be.

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.

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…

Australia is a world leader in the turn out of registered voters at elections, but we may not be getting a good deal from our elected representatives.

The working group chaired by the head of News Limited John Hartigan will be asked whether ordinary people’s views are heard in the Cabinet room, whether governments are too sensitive to opinion polls and whether they get their information from the right places.

The background paper raises the need for a bill of rights and also talks about the way in which interactive technology can change the nature of political engagement.

The role of lobbyists, think tanks and the media are open for discussion as well as the role and limits of freedom of information laws.

The paper asks whether the right structures are in place to ensure that decisions are made in the interest of the nation, rather than just the interests of political victory.

It asks whether we need an Australian head of state, whether the structure of federalism is the right one, and whether the parliament needs fixed terms.

It says that increasing public expectations of government will require an increasingly skilled and flexible public service.

The full background paper is available as a PowerPoint [928k] presentation (!) and a PDF file [260k]. And here’s a local copy of the PDF file in case the official website vanishes.

The paper ends with a list of discussion questions:

• How can we increase the participation of citizens in policy debate and decision-making?
• How could public trust and confidence in politicians be improved?
• Is parliament sufficiently accountable to the public? If not, what reforms are needed?
• What is the appropriate role of the judiciary in the Australian democracy? Is the current procedure for judicial appointments appropriate?
• What does the public have a right to know and what sort of information does the government have a right to keep secret? What accountabilities should bind both government and the media?
• What does it mean to be an Australian citizen, particularly in a multicultural context?
• What are the rights and responsibilities of citizens in our democracy? How should our rights be protected?
• How should individuals and the state share responsibility for community problems like climate change, lifestyle-related diseases etc?
• How could modern communications technology be used to improve access to information, citizen engagement and community awareness?
• What can be done to increase the quality and number of people wanting to enter the public service? What about politics?
• How can the current system of federal and state responsibilitiesbe improved to achieve (a) better delivery of services and industry; (b) better outcomes for the economy; (c) more cost effective use of public funds?
• Is there a need for constitutional reform?

Is there anything obvious missing from this list? Any slant?

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.

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?

The list is in state order, and shows their gender as well. Apparently this was important.

Mr Martin James Bailey Male WA
Mr Joseph Martin Fernandez Male WA
Ms Pia-Angela Francini Female WA
Ms Alison Lesley Gaines Female WA
Professor Janette Hartz-Karp Female WA
Ms Holly Elizabeth Ransom Female WA
Mr Wayne Francis Scheggia Male WA
Dr Christine (Chrissy) Sharp Female WA
Mr Peter Ajak Male VIC
Professor Judith Margaret Brett Female VIC
Mr Julian William Kennedy Burnside Male VIC
Mr Paul Chadwick Male VIC
Professor Allan Fels Male VIC
Ms Iresha Herath Female VIC
Ms Kristen Anna Isobel Hilton Female VIC
Professor Sarah Louise Joseph Female VIC
Ms Janice Winearls Keynton Female VIC
Dr Terry MacDonald Female VIC
Professor Robert Manne Male VIC
Ms Katherine Dawn Sampson Female VIC
Professor Cheryl Anne Saunders Female VIC
Ms Sally Warhaft Female VIC
Mr Alan Wu Male VIC
Dr Sally Young Female VIC
Mr Benedict Bartl Male TAS
Ms Lyn Mason Female TAS
Rev Professor Michael Tate Male TAS
Ms Olivia Guarna Female SA
Ms Elizabeth Francesca Ho Female SA
Ms Tanya Louise Smith Female SA
Mr Sean Barrett Male QLD
Senator the Hon George Brandis Male QLD
Dr Alexander Jonathon Brown Male QLD
The Honourable Matthew (Matt) Joseph Foley Male QLD
Mr Paul Formosa Male QLD
Ms Bridie Kathleen Jabour Female QLD
Ms Joanne Kelly Female QLD
Professor the Honourable Michael Lavarch Male QLD
Mr Michael McKinnon Male QLD
Mr Alexander McLaughlin Male QLD
Mr Stewart Mcrae Male QLD
Dr David Solomon Male QLD
Dr Anne Tiernan Female QLD
Ms Danielle Vujovich Female QLD
Professor Patrick Weller AO Male QLD
Ms Sarah Jane O’Rourke Female NT
Mr Mauri Japarta Ryan Male NT
Ms Erin Adams Female NSW
Mr Phillip Adams Male NSW
Ms Robin Banks Female NSW
Associate Professor Lyn Carson Female NSW
Professor Greg Craven Male NSW
Associate Professor Kate Jane Crawford Female NSW
Ms Miranda Devine Female NSW
Mr Macgregor Duncan Male NSW
Professor Geoffrey Ian Gallop Male NSW
Ms Kate Gauthier Female NSW
Mr Gerard Henderson Male NSW
Dr Helen Irving Female NSW
Dr Paul Kelly Male NSW
Ms Miriam Lyons Female NSW
Mr David Marr Male NSW
Mr Simon Rice Male NSW
The Honourable Helen Sham-Ho Female NSW
Professor Christopher Dominic Sidoti Male NSW
Mr Brett Solomon Male NSW
Associate Professor Anne Frances Twomey Female NSW
Professor Hillary Charlesworth Female ACT
Mr Harry Evans Male ACT
The Honourable Justice Mary Gaudron Female ACT
Ms Susan Gail Harris Rimmer Female ACT
Mr Michael James Harvey Male ACT
Ms Janet Eileen Hunt Female ACT
Sir Anthony Mason Male ACT
Mr Ian McPhee Male ACT
Ms Jamila Helen Rizvi Female ACT
Professor Marian Sawer Female ACT
Ms Amelia Mary Simpson Female ACT
Professor George John Williams Male ACT
Sir William Deane Male ACT
Ms Janet Giles Female SA
Ms Amy Sarah King Female
Prof Julianne Schultz Female
Mr Kerry Stokes Male NSW
Mr Howard Whitton Male

For delegates in the other topic areas, please see the full list.