Director of the Centre for Policy Development, and 2020 summit delegate, Miriam Lyons, writes in today’s Crikey (republished with permission):
Suddenly ideas are sexy. The Australia 2020 Summit has done for Deep Thought what Australian Idol did for karaoke - what was once a mildly embarrassing hobby best practised under cover of drunkenness is now played live to a national audience.
Like music professors asked to comment on the success of Idol, most of the wonks who went through the last two days can’t quite decide whether to be pleased that so many people are paying attention to ideas or annoyed that serious attempts to grapple with complex, long-term policy problems were sometimes lost amidst the all-singing, all-dancing Summit show.
In the governance group Marcia Hines was played by Maxine McKew, who, after listening to report-backs from groups with ideas ranging from FOI reform to a new Federation Commission, entreated us to put a little soul into it. Kudos to youth summit delegate Owen Wareham who read between the lines, said something like “here’s a sound bite, if that’s what you’re looking for” and delivered a punchy straight-to-camera pitch for automatic enrolment.
I had a lot of sympathy with Ms McKew’s call for more ideas that would capture people’s imagination. True originality is rare – especially when it comes to workable ways to run a country – but with so little time to jam ideas, it was inevitable that we sometimes ended up singing covers. In hindsight it’s pretty obvious that asking a group of clever and opinionated people to decide amongst themselves whose idea was the “biggest” was a recipe for mayhem. We probably would have been better off if the hard-working scribes had whacked our ideas straight on to ABC2’s ticker, and a mobile-wielding audience had texted their favourite policy to the top.
But although many people felt uncomfortable at the amount of detail lost in the translation of hours of feisty debate and carefully crafted compromise into “ambitions” and “priority themes”, there was still an incredible amount of light on that hill.
The constitution group, after quickly establishing that the divine right of kings wasn’t likely to be a feature of Australia’s governance in 2020, moved straight on to ways of ensuring that the process of taking the last steps towards independence works better this time around. Their conclusion? A plebiscite on the principle of severing Australia’s ties with the Crown, followed by a referendum on the model after extensive consultation (with Lyn Carson, Janette Hartz-Karp and others arguing for the use of some of the more representative devices in the consultation toolkit like citizens juries or assemblies).
My “open governance and media” group, which included some very sharp FOI thinkers, came up with a pretty detailed list of ways to protect citizens’ right to find out what their governments are up to. There was general support for reforming media law in the interests of consumers rather than producers of media, but Allan Fels’ recommendation that we “deregulate the electronic media” was sidelined due to a lack of time to debate the details of the Productivity Commission report. Paul Chadwick, ABC editorial policy director, came up with the excellent idea of abolishing Crown copyright (I’d explain why it’s excellent but I’m on deadline and over the word limit - feels like the Summit all over again).
My favourite idea from the weekend goes to the heart of why I think the Summit, for all its flaws, was a great idea - Collaborative Governance. Whether it’s through a hand-picked bunch of self-proclaimed ideas people, a “community cabinet”, or the random selection of a citizens jury, we need to upgrade democracy’s 19th Century plant and equipment if we’re going to make the right decisions on some of this century’s thorniest problems. To this end, one of the “big ideas” that came out of the governance stream, was ourgov.au - a cross between Get Involved, theyworkforyou.com and a whole bunch of other experiments in making it easier for citizens to access government information and participate in decision-making.
As the beleaguered staff at PM&C start sorting through the transcripts and deciding which ideas will get signed to the Kevin 24/7 label, most of the really interesting conversations started by the summit will be continuing elsewhere. Apparently the website that Summit delegates have been using to discuss each others’ ideas is going to be made public soon - so if you’re interested in helping to create a blueprint for a better federal government website, drop by sometime and join the conversation.
Abolishing Crown Copyright - or just simply only applying it where there really is a good reason - is an excellent idea.
There’s a whole bunch of government-created material of no conceivable commercial that could easily be incorporated into things like Wikipedia, but can’t because of Crown Copyright.
I’m a little surprised that the de-regulation of electronic media idea didn’t get a bigger guernsey. We’ve probably got a (shrinking) window of opportunity to ditch the oligopolies that govern our viewing and listening with the introduction of digital TV and radio, with the government having a role to play in the development of infrastructure for distribution. It wouldn’t be that expensive to hoik another satellite into orbit and expand the transmitters that already push ABC1/2/3 across the country. Also, it would quell the resentment against the ABC itself and open up cheaper pay television. There’s market and regulation failure piddled all over telecoms policy in Australia, and it needs to be fixed.
“Suddenly ideas are sexy” ??
Twaddle. They’ve always been ’sexy’. What’s sudden is all this TALK of ideas. As everyone on LP knows, ideas are constantly churning through the blogosphere, the MSM; amongst the general public, in the public service, in private companies, in research organisations, etc. Why, sometimes ideas can even be detected in universities or the ABC. Golly!
Let’s have some substance and less breathless hype. Let’s be self-critical and realistic.
Talk to us again in a few weeks, Miriam, when some of the dust has settled and the glow is waning. I hope that some good will come of the Summit, but the jury’s still out.
In a few weeks, the final report will be out and we’ll have more detail to work through, Ambigulous. So far all we have is a summary written in bureaucratese - which is why feedback from participants like Miriam and others who’ve been blogging and writing about the summit is so useful.
Yep, agreed Mark. The summaries in the newspapers are also too brief. I just think ideas have been around for thousands of years, that’s all.
Ahh, but Ambigulous, the thing is that its OK to talk about these things again, after 11 years of being told that do do so rendered you one of the hated “elites”. Personally, I found the whole thing a breath of fresh air. It was always too ambitious, and really should have run over a couple of weeks, but it represents a change in style and pace.
As to the Republic, it has an excellent chance of getting up this time around, especially if we dont let Malcolm Turnbull anywhere near it, or the drafting of the Referendum question - his ego, pig headedness and plain refusal to listen and consider models other than his preferred one, was a large part of the reason it lost last time around and why Howard succeeded in his effort to sabotage it.
On Crown copyright Paul Chadwick would be aware of the problem with Radio National. Many programs are transcribed but there’s a fair bit of good stuff that is not. You can download the audio for a month, then it disappears. If other parties were allowed to copy this material it might help a bit.
I don’t wish to dismiss the notion of ‘Collaborative Governance’, but short of despotism, all governance is collaborative, and the selection methods we have now are far more modern than any proposed here. Can you direct us to where ‘collaborative governance’ is more fully explored because it’s obviously worthy of further examination?
The trouble is that all posited selection methods for governance are a lot older than the “19th century plant and equipment” we have now:
- “Hand-picked bunches of self-proclaimed ideas people” sounds like the millenia old cabal or oligarchy or just government by the mates.
- “Community cabinets” sound all very Rousseauean and 18th century to me.
- As for “random selection of a citizen jury”, I believe it’s called Athenian Democracy.
One other question I have is how do we prevent the collision of ‘collaborative governance’ and ‘e-democracy’ from resulting in government by people with spare time, government by the computer-literate or government by those who are awake at 3am?
So it is possible to conclude that in eleven years of Howard,not one idea that wasnt of a Liberal type voter got up out of the community to government level and proceeded its life!?You are peddling memory loss and non-investigation at the same time!?The mainstream media has before the use of computers,and even to this day been an instrument of community ideas.Even women’s magazines!? What are you up to in this denial!? It was a common practice to snip out pages of mags. and newspapers even within the education sector!Which in itself has been a wheel within a wheel,and has had from time to time other wheels added to it!For goodness sake! Simply because some people now can emulate Hunter S. Thompson as educators,bloggers participators in all sorts of events that lead to and from government doesnt change the fact,often a bureaucrat or a member of Parliament,or even a Senator,may be contacted by the mainstream media and by way of questions,a idea from a reader maybe put forward in a special interview.I doubt the internet is as informal as it would seem to be at first glance,if the forgetting of other media functions have always had a formal and informal relationship with government and bureaucracies.Tonight, I was going to blog in anywhere I could on the diesel spill near Sydney covering ten kilometres.I was trying to get Ex-Air Vortex Tubes in arrays to be recognised as a way of cleaning diesel up.But,I am not that e-mail savvy when it comes to my use of them,and ,I was going to suggest to the company, to do some marketing please,on such matters.If I had a been a mainstream media journalist with a sense of being inspired by this technology,and I am sure they do go that way sometime,I could of used the bloody telephone,and the foot in the door,which accompanies somebody who is paid to be a journalist.Compare that sense of activity,which is still commercially driven,with the roundabout attitudes of your guest,and her attitudes are just then inefficient!?
I’m looking forward to reading more of Miriam’s reflections on the Summit, but this opening paragraph leaves a really bad taste in my mouth. I can’t quite put my finger on what it is, but I’ll try because, you know, it’s late and there’s other, More Important Things™ I should be doing… :^)
The message I get is “at last, us intellectuals is starting to get the respect we deserve”, which bugs me on a couple of levels.
Most of the attendees at the summit were people who are paid to be published writers and thinkers in their fields. That’s a pretty high mark of respect already, to be able to make one’s living out of writing and thinking. After that, I don’t have much time for any claim of ‘not being taken seriously enough’ or ‘labouring in obscurity’ or what have you.
The thing with the Summit, so far as I can see, is that a whole bunch of respected writers and thinkers are being put in a room together and it’s being shown on TV. Except it’s not really on TV, it’s on ABC 2, which only about 30% of households even have the option of viewing. It’s not likely many people watched the broadcast at all. It has featured heavily in the MSM, but a good sized chunk of the coverage has been rather off-putting, so I have trouble imagining the new and excited audience for “Deep Thought” that Miram is so pleased with.
Do you think there’s anyone in the country who was previously unconcerned with ‘open governance and media’ who’s now thinking about FOI reforms? There’s certainly been a big shift in the apparent attitude of the government but that’s totally different to the image of a popular change that the awkward karaoke-Idol comparison tries to evoke.
Karaoke uses pre-recorded music and is typically impromptu performances by untrained singers. Australian Idol has a live band with professionally coached and rehearsed performances. Karaoke is for participants, Idol is for spectators. Maybe I should just be glad that Miriam wasn’t in the Creative Australia session. :^)
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PS Ditching Crown Copyright is a very, very good and simple idea. Send it straight into the public domain.
“Many programs are transcribed but there’s a fair bit of good stuff that is not. You can download the audio for a month, then it disappears. If other parties were allowed to copy this material it might help a bit.”
Filesharing, torrents and the like could really come into their own in providing a cheap way of keeping this stuff available. The government sites should encourage rampant copying for the first month, then have a ‘How To’ for getting that content off other users later, and a list of what is available. If anything has become unavailable there could be feature where you can request a download on the condition that you agree to distribute it if others want it.
Darryl, I think you’ve expressed what leads to my disquiet very neatly.
On Crown copyright: one of the countries where enormous amounts of Govt data, bulletins, manuals etc are published at very low cost to the purchaser is the US. Of course they have a much larger population than we do, to share the publication costs, and a much more extensive set of research institutes, universities and public libraries (as potential purchasers). And also more use of web-dissemination?
I am waiting for a reality show called Big Ideas where contestants are invited to develop Big Ideas and the viewers get to vote for them.
Watching ABC2 (my dad has pay TV to watch soccer in his native land), I found the viewing very much about spotting the celebrity. This was made slightly more difficult becuase ABC2 didnt identify everyone who talked in the summit footage.
Today I went to a community planning day for residents effected by a recent announcement by NSW Dept of Housing in Macquarie Fields where the government has decided to solve social problems by selling public housing.
I was amazed at how well residents got across their Big Ideas on their concerns and what they wanted to do about them. Kevin07 would have seen how to really listen to emotional,passionate people dealing with issues that effect them.