This is a most welcome initiative aimed at identifying and harvesting the best ideas for making the country fit for the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century. The summit is being held on 19 and 20 April 2008.
The new Australian government has made a break from the tradition of only thinking as far ahead as the next election – a maximum of three years. Furthermore, it also breaks with the paternalism which assumes politicians know what is best for the country.
Experts in ten fields have been gathered to share and debate ideas. There is a good degree of participatory democracy in that anyone was able to make a submission and the main summit was preceded by a Youth summit and a variety of local summits.
It remains to be seen how valuable this summit will be and I will write more on this topic as the outcomes become known and implementation begins.
My only reservation is that the ten fields may be too compartmentalized. We should have an overarching, shared, vision of the country we wish our descendents to inherit. This, of course, would take a long time to develop and it may emerge from the summit. We need to ensure that ideas and policy operate across the silos. For example, encouraging more use of public transport and of bicycles would be good in at least three of the ten topic areas. It would improve the health of individuals (health), reduce traffic congestion so increasing productivity (productivity and economy), and reduce carbon dioxide emissions which contribute to global warming (sustainability and climate change).
A sequence of short-term decisions, not matter how good they are in themselves, do not constitute good long-term decisions. I am hopeful that this summit and what follows will lead to the long-term being given greater weight in all future decisions.
The summit website is http://www.australia2020.gov.au.
My submission was to plant 20 billion trees in Australia by 2020 (http://www.charlienelson.com/treeplantingtarget.htm).
19 April 2008