2020
21 Apr 2008
The Long View
To prevent a backlash, voters need to be fore-warned if a government is planning to institute big changes. 2020 was our warning, reports Alan Thornhill from Canberra
It's easy to be cynical about an initiative like the 2020 Summit. In 1983, people quipped: "What is a Summit? Any meeting attended by Bob Hawke." Today they worry: "The Prime Minister will now be able to do anything he likes - and say that he got support for it at the Summit."Sometimes, though, it pays to take a longer view.
Australia really was an industrial graveyard back in 1983, when Hawke called his economic summit. And those talks did help to prepare the nation for the huge changes that came shortly afterwards. Floating the dollar, cutting tariffs without matching cuts from our trading partners - these were the decisions that modernised Australia.
But big changes like those need preparation. Gough Whitlam learnt that lesson in his second 18-month term, after he suddenly announced a 25 per cent cut in all Australian tariffs. Voters never forgave him.
Some comfortable, middle-class voters might think that crises don't occur when Labor governments come to power. Sadly, they do.
It's too early to say just yet what changes we can expect from the 2020 Summit, but a 45 page "initial report", delivered just an hour after the Summit ended, gives some important clues.
The Summit put the issue of a Republic back on the national agenda. News Ltd boss John Hartigan suggested a two step transition: a referendum on whether Australians want a republic, then, if they do, another on what kind of republic it should be. But even among Rudd's ministers there is no consensus on this. His Deputy, Julia Gillard, regards the issue as urgent. But Foreign Minister Stephen Smith believes we should wait, politely, until the Queen vacates her present position. Smith wasn't so undiplomatic as to say something like: "No hurry, Your Maj, hang about as long as you like," but those thoughts are implicit in the stand he took.
The summiteers also recommend: equipping all Australians with world leading education and training; overcoming the public private divide in education; teaming non-Indigenous schools with those teaching Aboriginal children, in sister school relationships; a clean sheet review of Federal-State responsibilities for roads; a soil and hydrological study of Northern Australia; a national preventative health agency; 30 minutes exercise every day for sedentary workers; and a rights-based labour mobility program for Pacific Islanders.
That last item is something public servants would never have raised in the time of the previous prime minister, John Howard.
Debate at the Summit wasn't all high level, expert talk. A tax expert who took part in discussions on the economy admitted to being "appalled" at the low level of discussion in that group on taxation. "Some were talking about flat tax taxes and moving to a greater reliance on consumption taxes," the participant told newmatilda.com on condition of confidentiality.
The list above is far from exhaustive. Many other good - and not so good - ideas were raised at and before the summit.
The non-starters include the construction of a transcontinental railway across Northern Australia, and the abolition of the States. Admittedly, Kevin Rudd might be tempted by the second suggestion, but no serious politician would ever give it more than a passing thought.
Rudd left the 1002 participants in no doubt, though, that the way Australia is governed needs fixing. He said as much in his closing declaration.
Rudd's position seemed strangely similar to that of the school master, in François Truffaut's famous French film, The 400 Blows, which by sheer coincidence was playing in Canberra over the weekend. In a key scene, set in Paris in 1958, the school teacher, - looking at a particularly recalcitrant student - asks in despair: "Where will we all be in 10 years?" by which time this student would be an adult.
No, that student was not Daniel Cohn-Bendt, better known as "Danny the Red", who led the student riots that engulfed Paris in 1968, but he might well have been.
Any country wishing to avoid civil strife in demanding times, needs to plan. And that, essentially, is what the 2020 Summit was meant to do for Australia.
So was the Summit a success? From Kevin Rudd's viewpoint, yes. It backed his now clear plan to tidy up the way Australia is governed. This country's Federal system doesn't just lead to expensive and wasteful duplication. Try quadruplication, double it, then add one — and you’ll get some idea of what happens when you have six State bureaucracies, two Territory administrations plus one, overarching, national system, all heavily populated with little feifdoms.
But will the 2020 Summit benefit the nation? That question is probably best examined negatively.
About the worst thing Australians could do, in this rapidly changing world, is to stop talking and retreat to entrenched positions. Even if the Summit did no more than get Australians together, in a mutually re-enforcing venue, and get us all talking about what should be done, it must be rated a success.
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douglas jones
A few more missing, or so far unreported items, from the 20/20 meeting.
The supply of factual information to the electorate that it might vote on an informed bassi should it wish to do so remains unmentioned.
This is surprising given that the people were misinformed on Iraq, the functioning of a market economy supplanting Keynesian, the latest in the bursting of yet another speculative bubble created to make for growth and the bail outs that become more frequent, and many other items, necessary for the health happiness and stability of, society. To mention only one the work on the clitoris indicating its functioning in sexual pleasure for the female providing a air brushed view of anatomy, air brushed because it is missing from many texts and from sexual education.
The key is the difficulty of obtaining a full and factual report on almost any subject, for the media and government continually provide a less than honest statement using a mixture of one or two facts strung together with opinions and unsubstantiated facts providing a less than meaningful view of the actual situation.. Indeed taking the case for the war in Iraq the release of one of Downing Street Memos, May 1 2005, shows that in July 2002 the pattern of misinformation, lies, and was set, later to claim faulty intelligence, something contrary to the document’s statement.
Naturally it is a big ask that some sort of penalty should be imposed on these scams even where legislation ion our own law exists though bone might expect some control on finance to return to government edicts.
The market economy has provided slower growth rates than earlier periods an increased frequency of boom and bust, government bailouts (tax payer money) a greater percentage of GDP being in the government area contrary to the stated dictum of less government interference and the so called free market and globalisation produces results rather different from the claims that are made. Yet with the exception of a very few articles little of this appears in the media.
The latest scam the housing market when investigated using the internet shows a marked propensity for risk taking well beyond what following the 1929 bust had been put in place in financial markets. Little of this appears in the media rather it is portrayed as just one more blip in the generally robust tends of the business cycle.
The anatomy and function might seem trivial particularly in a male dominated world but it indicates the conditions necessary for females in general to experience orgasm, something demanded as of right by the male.
In each of these some stand to loose particularly entrepreneurs marketing financial and sexual attitudes, though in general the whole of society suffers sooner or later.
Correction will not be simple through increased accurate information so that those who wish to be informed can be but this begs the question in our society of spin what is true particularly when more are realising that neither government nor media can be trusted to provide facts .Another major problem begging solution. Yet a further problem is that of profit since, it is said that media cannot exist unless there is a profit motive. This of course is the underlying principle of the current market economy that is performing less well than previous attempts at an economic paradigm. That such a principle will need to change is shown by the dependence on growth and consumption, two of a number of behaviours needing change, subsuming population as a driving variable.
A success for whom? Kevin Rudd, or Australians?
How much discussion on the greatest time bomb hanging over the survival of the whole world, possibly even greater than Global Warming. What is that??? POPULATION CONTROL! Did it even rate a mention? Not to my knowledge. Do we really think that we are immune down here at the end of the world? Better think again. Oil prices, food prices, water pollution and shortages, all aggravated by a human population and breeding totally out of control and growing exponentially.
Dazza.
Let’s hold judgement for a while. We’ve had a decade of being told what’s good for us and precious little about why it was good for us. Perhaps we are now being invited to contribute and encouraged to discuss - not just the bigwigs at the summit, but all of us.
Oh, Dazza, you’re so funny !!! So delightfully doom and gloom !!!
Ask any demographer and she will tell you that worry about population control is so yesterday.
Educate women and they will have fewer children. Improve women’s status and they will have fewer children. If women are recognised and valued, they tend to have less children.
In Europe, populations are either barely rising or actually falling, and only rising because people are living longer.
In (semi?)-fascist societies like China, women are penalised for having more than one child, and female children are killed off.
In Africa, AIDS is killing off both parents and children.
Meanwhile, to take your point about rising food prices, farmers are switching to biofuels, even in India, creating artificial food scarcities and forcing up the price of food for those who can pay.
So, while it must be a relief to be able to say, there’s nothing we can do, let’s sit up on our mountain and curse the evil world, I’m sorry to say Dazza that there is plenty we can, and must, do. No rest for the wicked. Sorry for the bad news.
Joe
Yes, Joe, I am quite aware of the ‘educate women and they will have less progeny’. Definately seems to work, where it has had a chance.
But how do you get this past the Fundamentalist Mullahs, such as in Saudi Arabia and many other Islamic countries? In the West, about a thousand times (and maybe a lot more) more money is spent on the manufacture and use of armaments and agressive wars in order to obtain oil and minerals, than has been spent on Education and Health.
Then again, we have places like France and Australia who offer their women money to have more kids!!!! Total absolute unthinking insanity! But again, Governments are controlled by Big Business, and they keep on insisting on cheap workers, and more consumers to buy their never ending supply of junk made from non-renewable resources. Big Business in Australia keeps on insisting that they need more than 40 million consumers here to buy their rubbish, and to retain manufacture in Australia. Governments, including that of Howard and Rudd, listen very carefully, and comply.
At the moment we are bringing an increasing lot of immigrants into Australia to serve Industry, and this in itself is causing very large problems with providing the infrastructure necessary, and driving up house and rental prices. It is also doing untold harm to our ecology, but who mentions that!?
Dazza.
Prof of Biology venerable EO Wilson at Harvard agrees population is slowing down … to 9 billion … that’s allright then!
I mean get real. I studied mass population crashes in my zoology degree in the 80ies - only this time it going to be humans, and it’s going to be self inflicted.
Speaking of doom and gloom - I reckon I can do better than that - those who die before us will be lucky!?
Getting pretty crowded up that mountain ! ‘Leftist hermits for a White Australia now !’ and ‘Sterilise all Women Now !’ : is that it ?
Joe
It is a pity that any serious comment on the article is diluted by flippant and gross contributions (rmg1859). Surely it is possible to have an intelligent discussion at a national conference on ideas for the future about the optimum sustainable population for Australia, without epithets and gross language.
My response:
1. Educate and improve womens role is good but too slow. Look at Kenya, Darfur, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Nigeria etc. All grossly overpopulated and still having large families. AIDS is cruel and should not be seen as Population Policy. And we are fighting the Catholic Church which desires megamillions of poor souls to fill up their churches and be saved.
2. China has an enlightened but over-rigorous population policy (not as outlined by rmg1859) Urban families have financial disincentives (~ $15000) to have more than 1 child, rural families can have two, ethnic families unlimited. Aborting females is practised in many "backward" cultures and is not supported by the authorities in China.
3. As Dazza says (colourfully) - why do we pay women/girls $5000 to have a baby, pay for IVF and have a high immigration rate. Where is our sustainable population policy goal?
4. I believe the optimum population level for the planet should be about 2 billion. We will get to 9 Billion by 2050. How do we move humanely and steadily towards this goal? Perhaps we should review the fundamental right to breed!!
Gordon, I would love to sincerely apologise for any gross language, as soon as you can point it out.
Countries which are ‘grossly overpopulated’: almost invariably, the ones that you name are economically very under-developed in the sense of relying overwhelmingly on an agrarian economy.
Actually, Ethiopia is not over-populated at all - what is much more of a problem is a grossly exploitative semi-feudal system which is grinding down the poor (pastoralists and peasant farmers), forcing them off their land to use it for lucrative export crops to Europe. I’m not even sure if Nigeria is over-populated. Even Bangla Desh is far less populated than most of Europe, certainly less than Singapore. So it’s not population which is necessarily the problem, more likely type of economy.
And most of those countries which you cite as promoting large families tend to have very gender-biased cultural practices, especially in relation to girls’ education.
So there you go: economic backwardness and social inequality promote over-population.
Sorry for providing too Marxist an analysis. In fact, I find it offensive to say that people, the poorest people in the world, those who need our help the most, are seen in some way as the problem.
And, Gosh, I’m so glad that we’ve all got it so wrong about enlightened China (so I must have got it wrong to call it semi-fascist), that they don’t support even indirectly any anti-female policies. That’s allright then.
Here is another proposal, Gordon:
5. Those who have already had more than a world average of life-span, who are using up precious resources, and who think there are too many people on the earth, think seriously about doing the decent thing.
Joe
rmg1859, Joe,
I remember you posting about the demographics of tertiary education among indigenous Australians. Yesterday I happened to be needing to sit next to an indigenous ABS staff member for a prolonged period of time. She commends to me that the only conceivable way for the statistics of rates of tertiary graduation among Aboriginal Australians, to be exceeding the rate among the non-Aboriginal population, is to include everybody who acquires their year 12 certificate at Tafe, as a tertiary educated person.
Would you mind explaining your position in the matter,and your source, as you have often previously expressed. It is wise not to be ill informed.
Word Sword Sworn
At Hath
That Hat
Inshallah no poetry farce
By Solomon’s Seal will my past
No word not true can last
Hi Becky, long time no hear !
I’m not sure what you mean about rates, but I’m very happy to clarify anything you need.
* According to the 2006 Census, there were a total of about nineteen and a half thousand Indigenous graduates as at mid-2005. Add the first-time graduates for 2006 (about 1000) and for 2007 (about 1100) and you get a total as at the end of last year very close to 22,000;
* According to DEEWR (DEST/DEETYA/DEET etc.) data, going back to the eighties, the total number of Indigenous students commencing tertiary studies was equivalent to just over half of the 20-year-old age-cohorts, since at least 1990. In other words, while 110,000 Indigenous people turned 20 since that time, about 57,000 Indigenous people commenced tertiary studies since that time. Of course, some were post-graduate students, some were enrolling for the second or third time, etc. But the point is that since 1990, Indigenous tertiary commencements have been in the ball-park of around half of each age-group. In other words, of all those Indigenous people born since 1970, and into the future, about half will, at some time in their lives, go on to tertiary study;
* DEEWR graduate numbers tend to under-estimate the Census figures. But, on checking what I know of the graduates in, for example, the Port Lincoln area (where nearly sixty people have graduated through the Uni of SA’s former Study Centre), barely twenty are recorded. So I suspect that the Census figures themselves under-estimate the actual totals. But I’m happy to run with the Census data, as long as it is done consistently, i.e. from one census to another;
* Compared to the student body in 1999, the proportion of Indigenous students enrolling (and graduating) in degree-level and above courses, rather than bridging courses or diplomas, has improved dramatically. Enrolments in lower-level courses has dropped very sharply. Women still make up around two-thirds of all Indigenous tertiary students, and graduates;
* In the last ten years or so, especially in the last five years, the proportion of Indigenous students enrolling in mainstream courses, i.e. the sorts of courses that other Australian and overseas students enrol in, has rocketed up, while the proportions enrolling in Indigenous-focussed courses has declined very sharply. In SA, for example, apart from one course for Anangu students, and a music course at Adelaide Uni, the proportion of Indigenous students enrolling in Indigenous-focussed awards has dropped from around a fifth of all Indigenous students in SA (about 100) down to barely 20;
* Female Indigenous commencing student numbers: all female Australian commencing student numbers: total tertiary enrolments include overseas students, and even ‘domestic’ enrolments includes students from NZ and the Pacific. When you take these out of the equation, Indigenous female commencing students make up about 1.6 % of all female commencing students. What proportion of the Australian female population over, say, 20 years old, is Indigenous ? 1.65 %. So Indigenous women have done a marvellous job of almost reaching parity with other Australian women. And incidentally, yes, the rate of Indigenous female commencing students would be better than the rate for NON-Indigenous male commencing students. Is this the sort of thing you mean ?
Please let me know what you mean by ‘rates’, Becky, and I’ll be happy to get back to you. I think that Indigenous tertiary education is an amazing success story which smashes so many of the myths and stereotypes about Indigenous achievement.
Joe
Becky,
I’ve been turning over the suggestion that ‘the only conceivable way for the statistics of rates of tertiary graduation among Aboriginal Australians, to be exceeding the rate among the non-Aboriginal population, is to include everybody who acquires their year 12 certificate at Tafe, as a tertiary educated person.’
‘Exceeding the rate among the non-Aboriginal population’ - rate of what exactly, Becky ?
Your friend is a fool, either that or he can’t interpret data. On the Indigenous rates of tertiary graduation: I’ve heard a host of racist ‘explanations’, and a lot of twisting and turning to avoid the conclusion that ‘Indigenous students can successfully graduate from tertiary courses’. But it’s a simple matter to check out the 2006 Census figures - your ABS friend should know how to check out his own figures:
Post-Grad Gr Dip/ Bachelor Adv. Dip/
Degree Gr Cert Degree Dip. TOTAL
National 1,197 1,147 8,161 8,741 19,246
Metropolitan 706 536 4,189 3,826 9,257
ex-Metro 491 611 3,972 4,915 9,989
NSW 453 385 2,793 2,932 6,563
Sydney 257 177 1,309 1,176 2,919
ex-Sydney 196 208 1,484 1,756 3,644
SA 66 69 416 498 1,049
Adelaide 55 51 295 315 716
ex-Adelaide 11 18 121 183 333
Queensland 286 311 2,195 2,568 5,360
Brisbane 142 109 908 852 2,011
ex-Brisbane 144 202 1,287 1,716 3,349
Victoria 142 122 817 847 1,928
Melbourne 101 80 547 506 1,234
ex-Melbourne 41 42 270 341 694
Tasmania 39 32 363 343 777
WA 101 108 908 812 1,929
Perth 79 62 570 391 1,102
ex-Perth 22 46 338 421 827
NT 51 71 398 587 1,107
Darwin 33 25 197 243 498
ex-Darwin 18 46 201 344 609
ACT 57 50 273 139 519
Add the graduates for 2006 and 2007 and you get somewhere between 21,500 and 22,000. And I suspect that, if anything, some graduates don’t tick any of the boxes declaring ‘Indigenous’ status, so the total figure is likely to be higher.
But the ball-park figure is currently 22,000. With larger numbers coming on to tertiary study in the next decade, I am confident that there will be fifty thousand graduates by 2020, and a hundred thousand by 2040. And so what, you may ask ?
Well, in the first instance, very few of them will be drunks, on drugs, child-abusers, wife-beaters, thieves, carjackers or skivers. They will live reasonably long lives and not be social burdens. Since the ywill be putting some effort into their lives, they will tend not to be obese. They will most likely marry and raise their children firmly, and with careful guidance, to do the same as themselves, or something similar.
Secondly, they will have skills which are of great value to Australia generally, and to Indigenous communities in particular, as role-models, as professionals, as participants, as leaders.
Thirdly, they will be breaking the stereotypes and shoving it up the racists, like your friend at the ABS. As well, their very existence is a smack across the ear of all those blackfellas who complain that they do not have opportunities, as a way to justify their non-effort and welfare dependence. These graduates are the Indigenous people of the future, the new generations who will carry the population through the 21st century.
Joe
Oh, Joe, you are really giving that hobby horse of yours a right real thrashing this time. Calling someone who has an opinion on figures a racist is really taking the Mickey! You have been on this now for many moons, how about giving it all a very long holiday. I am sure that we are all very happy that great numbers of City Aboriginal people are doing wonderfully,but as I have said before that does absolutely nothing for the great numbers of Indigenous peoples out there in the Bush, all a very long way from Tertiary Institutions. Even basic schooling, in most instances. Those are the ones now in great need, and on whom we should all be concentrating.
Dazza.
Hi Dazza !
Yes, I am very proud to have been associated with such wonderful Indigenous achievement. No, my dear friend, I called someone who couldn’t believe that indigenous people could graduate from university courses in such numbers a racist.
If you look at the figures that I cite above (from the ABS Census 2006), you can see that quite a high proportion of graduates are ex cities, working outside of metropolitan areas. But the bottom line is that the problems of remote Indigenous settlements are no more the responsibility of Indigenous graduates than they are yours, or any other white fella.
And I fully agree with you, Dazza, that a great crime has been committed against children in the remote areas, partly by governments, partly corrupt organisations which had the funds and the task of providing services to settlements, and partly by parents who have some weird notion that, because they are Indigenous, they don’t have to do anything for their children, it is all up to the government. You have a good point there, Dazza.
Yes, there should (and I have no doubt that Gillard and Macklin soon will) be far more adequate provision of educational facilities and personnel in remote areas. Children should be taught in English, so that they can read the text-books above Grade 2 level, understand (and start to discriminate between) the good and the bad on TV, and communicate with each other and with people from the outside world where they will most probably find work when they are fully educated and seeking employment, as (I’m sure you would agree) is their right. Education is for choice, for opportunities wherever they may seek them, and any policy which confines the children to the remote settlements, as if they are, and always will be, in an anthropological zoo, should be immediately scrapped. Do you agree ?
And once people have skills + choice, whether they return to (or remain on) settlements to build them up, or seek opportunities elsewhere, is their business. That’s part of their human rights. Do you support human rights for Indigenous people, Dazza ?
Joe
Becky,
Just to go back what you were writing, ‘for the statistics of rates of tertiary graduation among Aboriginal Australians, to be exceeding the rate among the non-Aboriginal population’ -
I don’t think that I ever wrote that the rate of graduation, i.e. the proportion of Indigenous adults who completed tertiary courses, was higher than the proportion of non-Indigenous adults. Perhaps a quarter of Indigenous 24-year-olds, to take a representative age-group, and up to 40 % of non-Indigenous 24-year-olds, would be graduating each year.
On the other hand, the rate of improvement or rate of growth in the proportion of Indigenous adults completing tertiary studies is much higher than the rate of growth in the proportion of non-Indigenous adults completing tertiary studies. The growth in the last couple of years in Indigenous graduate numbers would be much higher, about fourteen per cent growth compared to five or six per cent growth.
Perhaps by 2020, when about one in every six or seven Indigenous adults will be a graduate, there will still not be parity in graduate numbers: by that time, about one in every four or five non-Indigenous adults will be graduates. By the way, currently, about one in every nine Indigenous women is a graduate, and maybe one in every five or six women generally. But building up a body of graduates takes a life-time, after all.
Is this what you meant ?
Joe