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.