2020 Summit wasn't just about ideas
A week after the Australia 2020 Summit, the maelstrom has fizzled away. Thankfully, the media had little to do with the Summit itself. Sky News' David Spears ran a competent but unnecessary panel interview on the second day opening plenary session, but that's it. (That said, I was especially impressed with how young Sam Hadid articulated cultural inclusion.) Sure, there were dozens of journos shuffling from room to room scoffing the biscuits. The newspapers have done some good reporting, including online. But visual media, especially commercial television, did the Summit a complete disservice focusing on celebrities--Catey and Jacko are nice people, but the show was not about them, surely. The Summit organisers let themselves down by focusing most on their Creativity stream in the final plenary. Yes, I think that creativity and arts should pervade most national pursuits, but that's not a new idea.
ABC Television tried to cover the Summit, mainly on ABC2. I had it turned on most of the time, to the disdain of my young children who didn't recognise their future. But most of the coverage was of studio guests discussing what was said in speeches and staged events. Precious little was shown of Summiteers actually engaged in dialogue. What I did glean was that each of the ten streams ran their groups their own way. Most were run like noisy public hearings. The TV had the poorest coverage of the Governance stream, which interested me most. After a rousing opening speech by John Faulkner, all we got was their final wrap on the second day. My PhD supervisor Lyn Carson participated in that stream, and wrote that many of the popular ideas didn't make it into the final published report. Others have written that the wording has been altered. A republic or a bill or rights is not thinking big, it's just rehashing established positions. Fodder for endless cynicism.
Tim Fisher ran the Rural stream like a policy wonk planning session. Climate Minister Penny Wong ran the Climate stream with an iron fist and made "executive decisions"--why was she allowed to do this?
On the other hand, the Family, Communities and Social Inclusion stream did it right--they used qualified facilitators who knew how to impartially guide a group forward. What emerged (and that is the key) was not just ideas, but the diversity of values and beliefs in the community. They used well-established techniques of open dialogue and idea endorsement, rather than controlled monologue. Of course, community engagement people know a lot about this, as they practice it every day.
My fear is that most of the other participants left the Australia 2020 Summit not having even the faintest comprehension about what well-facilitated deliberation actually looks and feels like. The Governance stream were proud of their recommendation of "collaborative governance", but did most of them understand it? Just read all the participant blogs and reports (not hard to Google) who claim that they felt unsatisfied by the process. No truly deliberative process should leave participants in this state.
Of course, the challenge was always tough. You can't invite 1002 people to a meeting armed with ideas that they hold dear to their hearts, and then wonder why everyone didn't get on famously. We still don't really know what each Department will do with the recommendations.
As with Family, Communities and Social Inclusion, the objective and the method for all streams should have been to dig into the messy diversity of values and beliefs, to uncover the range of aspirations for different Australians. Of course, some of these would be contradictory. But by making them explicit, there is an authentic platform to gauge the appropriateness of the innovative ideas to improve our lot. Ironically, media pundits have condemned some streams for generating "motherhood" aspirations as their "big idea". But that's where it should have always started.
Note: image used without consent.
Post a Comment