Our friends at Griffith Review are holding an event in Brisbane tomorrow at the State Library of Queensland from 1 to 4pm: Read more »
Our friends at Griffith Review are holding an event in Brisbane tomorrow at the State Library of Queensland from 1 to 4pm: Read more »
This piece was written last week, and didn’t make it into print among the plethora of musings on the Australia 2020 summit. It should be noted that after I put pen to paper, the stories about the final communique having a rather tenuous link with the discussions in the stream emerged. That’s disappointing, but hardly surprising. I learnt a long time ago that whoever writes the minutes of a meeting is in an incredibly powerful position. Read more »
It’s unrealistic to expect detailed policy prescriptions to come out of two days of discussion - though the choice of two days of discussion with SFA preparation was entirely the government’s. And a variety of sources are saying that the interim reports really struggled to capture the tenor of the actual discussions. Read more »
I’ve had a go at drawing together some of my commentary on the politics of and media reaction to the 2020 summit in my New Matilda column for this week.
There’s also a measured assessment of the summit in Eureka Street from John Warhurst, which I think is well worth a read.
Newspoll tomorrow has Brendan Nelson up one point to 10% as opposed to Kevin Rudd’s 71% (down two points) on the preferred PM question. Within the MoE, Dennis. Labor’s up two on the 2PP to 61-39.
Dennis Shanahan actually spoke some sense recently: Read more »
As a follow up to the discussion of the 2020 Creative Australia stream here, I’m reproducing (with permission) below the fold an article by Nicholas Pickard in today’s Crikey. Read more »
This morning I found the following passage in Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks which might be applicable to an aspect of Australia’s republic debate:
Thus it is not a question of the people who “have the brains” feeling that they are being reduced to the level of the lowest illiterate, but rather one of people who think they are the ones with the brains wanting to take away from the “man in the street” even that tiniest fraction of power of decision over the course of national life which he possesses. Read more »
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. Read more »
Today’s Opposition Organ reports that the eminent indigenous academic, Professor Marcia Langton, believes that the Indigenous 2020 Summit Stream, consisting of people selected by the Federal Government, was uninformed and unrepresentative, and failed to adequately address policies to secure the learning, health and economic future of indigenous children. Read more »
One of the most interesting things about the Australia 2020 summit is an accentuation of a trend that was already evident - the broadening of public focus on long term issues and possible solutions, which I suspect will be one of the enduring contributions of the Rudd government. Read more »
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