2020
22 Apr 2008
It's Rudd's Australia Now... We Just Live in It
The 2020 Summit has put Labor's agenda squarely in the mainstream, writes Mark Bahnisch
One of the most interesting things about the Australia 2020 Summit has been its accentuation of a trend that was already evident: a shift in focus to long term issues and their possible solutions, which I suspect will be one of the enduring contributions of the Rudd Government.
The issue of climate change, in particular, resonated so much for the Labor Party in the election last year precisely because it wasn’t amenable to the symbolic short term fix style of government so beloved by John Howard. Similarly, much of the public’s distaste for the mainstream media relates to its endless focus on the horse race aspects of politics, gotcha moments and the "why haven’t you fixed this yesterday?" style of interviewing so pervasive among the press gallery.
Kevin Rudd’s great electoral strength was to harness the desire for a focus on both big problems and everyday issues which resonated with citizens’ lived experience. Conversely, Howard’s endless blame shifting was his downfall in the end.
The 2020 Summit has been compared with Bob Hawke’s 1983 National Economic Summit, and there’s a similar dynamic at work. Just as Hawke’s Summit sought to lock in support for an agreed economic and social policy program, 2020 worked to bury the culture wars of the Howard era. That issues such as the Republic were so broadly supported - and not just by the usual latte sipping suspects, but by captains of industry, business leaders and other luminaries of the Establishment - demonstrates that the debate really has moved on.
Reactions from the culture wars commentariat, only underline the new irrelevance of the style of political contestation which originated with Howard’s animus against Paul Keating’s alleged elitism. In fact, many of the proposals supported by the Summit are squarely in the centre of the road, and more than capable of attracting a very broad range of support outside the (largely centrist, anyway) ranks of the Labor Party.
Thanks to Fiona Katauskas
It’s been pointed out that many of the ideas articulated at the Summit aren’t "new" and "fresh", but that’s hardly surprising. Public policy doesn’t work like that. Nor is it the point. The Summit was as much about forging a consensus around certain long term issues and moving beyond the "me-tooism" of the election campaign as it was about harnessing the ideas of the best and brightest.
All this leaves the Liberal Party well and truly boxed in a corner, with Brendan Nelson struggling to decide whether to support or critique the initiative. And the spectacle of one of Howard’s most discredited ministers, Alexander Downer, railing against elites while seated next to David Flint in a room full of the blue rinse pearl set really does highlight that conservatism can no longer be equated with "the mainstream".
The focus on the long term also shines a sharp light on the media. Alongside the predictable prattling of the opinion pages, we’ve seen tawdry attempts at humour from the likes of Annabel Crabb. Probably because proprietors, CEOs and media executives were present at the summit, journos have felt under pressure to demonstrate their independence. That they could apparently only do so by flicking the switch to cynicism is telling.
Still, in some quarters, there’s been a greater focus on the real impacts of policy than we’re used to - a welcome side effect of the Summit. We need to see more of that and less of the tedious and stereotyped stock in trade of the jaundiced media elites.
The 2020 Summit has real potential not just to open up a new way of governing, as Rudd envisaged, but also to stimulate some much needed soul searching among those whose vocation is to report on governance and politics.
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What’s with the Annabel Crabb hate, Mark? She’s my favourite writer in the entire Fairfax stable.
Trying too hard to be the new Matt Price, I reckon Rachel. She’s capable of much better than trawling for laughs based on the most cynical possible insider view of the political stage.
Annabel Crabb’s piece was fine. Baa-hnisch here is following the ALP Inc script hardly aware of his own naivety. Hence the cheap sheep shot just now. Or is it a job application Mr Baa?
You can’t airbrush a secretive selection process out of existence whatever humbug cheering. Why those 1,000 versus the other 7,000? I know in my own sustainability field there were heaps who disagree with ALP forest policy who have science on their side, not Rudd’s, who were omitted. And hypocritical Rudd is on record saying ‘follow the science’. Only he isn’t. And that yet may be why he skipped the John Button funeral? Because departed industry minister called woodchipping of natural forests ” a bastard of an industry”. A half pager advert in the Canberra Times on the weekend for the 2020 sheep makes the same point.
(It’s okay for you Qlders who shut down the dinosaur industry in most part for existing plantations, what about Tas, Vic, NSW, WA?)
It’s mediocre to swallow the govt gush. Alan Ramsey called it wankery. Mungo McCallum called it Mass Debate. Eric Beecher was mortified at the fawning by the big media. I agree with all of these.
A conference is fine. No worries. But all that free media for unproven untested self referential speculations - that’s false. It lacks press integrity.
Rudd is too clever for his own good with these stitch ups. It will catch up with him for sure. For a start he has a hole where his ecological sustainability should be … and I reckon he knows it and is paralysed by neurosis, too weak to even invite Bob Brown. Talk about weak.
Tom, if you’d been following what I’ve been writing about the summit, you might have noted I’ve been quite critical of it - and I’m going to be quite critical of the outcomes in the Creative Australia stream as well in an upcoming piece. I’m not “swallowing the government gush” and nor do I have a particular barrow to push for the ALP. What I am suggesting is that the media’s cynicism does represent a real issue in terms of the coverage of policy as opposed to writing snark about politics, and that I think it has been a political plus for Rudd for the reasons I stated. I’m analysing, not endorsing.
Howard Haighter
“The 2020 Summit has real potential not just to open up a new way of governing, as Rudd envisaged, but also to stimulate some much needed soul searching among those whose vocation is to report on governance and politics.”
So, that’s ‘an analysis’ is it Mark.
Sounds more like an opinion to me.
Surely no one could really believe that Rudd was thinking past 2020 being a distraction, not a ‘new way of goverening’, given his very constipated approach to government so far?
And really, is the Rudd approach so different to the Howard one?
Strong central control, few ministers speaking out, very little change of direction, total acceptance of Howard’s economic directions… and so on…oh, yes, let’s not forget the eye-cast-down acceptance of God too.
As for ‘the meeja’, well you’re probably correct there but not in their ‘cynical’ approach so much as an acceptance of the status quo, like always with the meeja.
Sure, there may be one or two token badboy writers who mildy object to the course taken, but on the whole, all our meeja have accepted whatever the government de jour dishes out, in states or feds spheres.
The ‘socialist rag’, the SMH, is as Tory as The Oz, and deals with the same stories in much the same way.
None of the commercial radio or TV stations have ‘political’ commentators, just a few dogsbodies that lash pollies with feathers now and again, and the ABC is so mild the Sunday ‘Backsliders’ looks like a ‘revolution’, when it barely scratches the surface of anything.
Still, it’s good to see the dafter conservative commentators shown up for what they are every week.
I’ve never read Annabel Crabb, but she seems to be one of the brighter commentators on ‘Backsliders’, along with Lenore.
Howard Haighter
Aha… I took Mark’s link to Annabel’s scribblings and I have to ask, what else could she write about, about something that probably was a waste of time and money?
But a good point Mark, about all the meeja bigwigs being there.
How come they got an invite? What about the separation of state and meeja? Or is it the 3.5 Estate these daze? They are supposed to write news not create it.
It could have been worse…. we could have had a ‘Light on the Hill’ torch relay from Bathurst to Canberra to help open it all…. with the Rudd’s righthand mates from various unions as ‘flame attendants’ to make sure it didn’t go out this time. Or maybe one of the Men of The Trees carrying a seed from the Tree of Knowledge, from Qld of course, a real Eden these daze.
No Mark, the condust of the event was the cynical reality with the PR choreography, not the critics. Go back and watch the 4 Corners episode on the ALP Inc racket. That could well lead to a developer led $5B tunnel build in Sydney from flogging our $15B energy assets. This is what Rudd really stands for. Not theories.
The concept of worthies and elders gathering and throwing ideas around was never the problem. The problem is the covert selection process. And the manipulative control of the presentation. What’s more it’s all coming out just how manipulative with ideas not in the plenary doing up in the reports. Reports written presto before streams have really even concluded.
But you know the famous Margaret Meade was right - It IS only a small group of people who have really changed things.
The penicilin mob, the double helix mob, and so on. Sure a big crowd can provide good support, but it’s the little group with brains, guts, and tenacity that provides the leadership.
This is my real life experience and it’s a common experience.
The evidence of political history tells us. Conferences like Rio 1992 - yet now we are told we are well off the rails on every ecological measure. Bali conference just a few months back 2007 but emissions just go up. Even local sustainability conference in Newcastle NSW in 1997 extolling such as the Green Olympics 2000. All big gatherings of smart willing people of very limited outcome.
The heading of your piece tells the story and so did Rudd with his opinion piece Thursday prior eg p11 SMH 17 April: Rudd is seeking to annexe the non aligned centre of the public to his brand. So it’s a recruitment exercise by another name. It’s smart logical politics but it is very self interested too.
Which is why my news blog talks about the message of allegorical movie Rollerball re any monolithic Corporate monopolising the public discourse. How much has Rudd analysing the Beijing Central Govt all those years also changed him I wonder? People like me will and must kick his lily white *rse for any impertinent manipulations.
Why do you think I keep publishing the list of 100 scientists who challenged Howard pre 2004 election? None of them were chosen by Rudd to his summit in 2008 apparently. That’s a serious problem of same ol’ same ol’.
That’s not a safe way to do democracy. No wonder those from the Green side and those from the Right are busy teasing out the contradictions and lack of probity amongst the positives of the 2020 Summit. That really is democracy and those who reject such dynamic critique are suppressing real unfettered free thinking and the courageous for daring to stand outside the warm friendly tent dispensing political mogadons and henna ALP tattoos as much to say - see it doesn’t hurt, what about the real hot brand now eh?
Intrinsic to staging is that the folks in the gilded cage are well catered for and flattered. Not least because they are busy inside as the PR goes out. The ALP guys know how to fix things very very well. Give them credit. So controlling. That’s just plain power games.
This is what a party machine’s currency is - access and duchessing and monopolising coverage. So no surprises all the happy campers in the event. They are way too close to have perspective. A much healthier process would have been to exclude every elected party politician so the campers were not in fact mediated.
I hope that the Ideas Summit quickly becomes an annual event, with a different thousand participants each time.
OF COURSE, this first time, the ideas are woolly and vague and far too abstract, but after all everybody was self-conscious and a bit up themselves. And what can you do in two days ?
So, once the gloss and glitz has worn off the concept a bit, on a second and third etc. time around, ideas may be much more thought-out, directly applicable, obviously vital or valuable, economically and socially (i.e. pump vast funds into improving the rail infrastructure to get trucks off the roads, and into wind-power and solar arrays, and into vast plantations of valuable native trees at Indigenous settlements, that sort of thing).
And with an annual Summit, perhaps three days to allow for ideas to be teased out and made more substantial, you and I, dear NM reader, might be recognised for our intrinsic worth and invited ;) Joe
Max Bound The test will be among other things the next budget. If it continues to be framed as past ones have in recent years in the frame work of what Rudd himself,in 2006, called economic fundamentalism it will indeed be a worry. There are alternatives to tax concessions for the well off and so called budget surpluses. Stopping subsidies to polluting corporations and real work on a new economic policy direction would be a worth while start in a long list of critically needecd changes.
The Rudd Australia 2020 Summit was stacked, biased, unrepresentative, incompetent, irresponsible and BETRAYED Australia, Australia’s kids and the Planet (for a detailed analysis of this you have to go outside the Australia Murdochracy to North America e.g. “Australia 2020 Summit Ignroed Genoicde and Child Abuse. Bush-ite Rudd Rudd Australia Denial “: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/21894/42/ ).
Thus 1/3 Australian women suffer child sexual abuse (see p57, “Little Children are Sacred report” writing about Australians as a whole) - but this was outrageously IGNORED by the Ruddite Summiteers as bemoaned publicly by Participant and Youth Homelessness expert Father Riley .
For all the Rudd-speak rhetoric about Climate Change, the “Climate Change Group” was dominated by the Coal Industry and its ONLY clear cut response to what top US scientists regards as a Climate Emergency was for all new buildings to be carbon neutral after 2020.
Extraordinarily the Interim report in the section on “Climate Change” did not even mention “renewables” except as a matter for “disagreement”!!!
The stacked Australia Summit was a national disgrace - an excellent opportunity LOST due to Rudd-speak, spin and the horrendous capacity of Australians to avoid seeing “the elephant in the room”.
If you want to read MY 171 explicit, succint suggestions covering all 10 Topic Areas to the Australia 2020 Summit see Submission ID 2015 (see Submissions: http://www.australia2020.gov.au/submissions/home.cfm ) that were ALL comprehensively IGNORED by the Ruddites.
My #171 suggestion precisely informed by the expert views of top US climate scientist Dr Hansen, Head of of NASA’s Goddard Space Studies Center, NY and adjunct Professor at Columbia University) was : “10.19. URGENT - a Global Declaration of a Climate State of Emergency to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) to a safe and sustainable level of 300-350 ppm”.
Peace is the only way but Silence kills and Silence is complicity.
If this is “Kevin Rudd’s Australia” is Sydney now reclining on the “Costa Brava”? The bullying of Costa to achieve the privatization of NSW electricity is a symptom of the contempt of the Iemma Government for the party’s rank and file and for trade unions . The unions contributed generously towards the survival of the government, but the Big End of town whispers constantly in the government’s ear. Corporate donations not rank and file chook raffles are what people like Costa want.
If Morris Iemma wants to survive he should dismiss Costa and start listening to the “working families” who voted him back into power.
Costa and those like him who have contempt for trade unionists and ordinary party members should be expelled from the Labor Party. This should be the first step towards the reconstruction of the party as a democratic political organization instead of being the tool of corporate or factional bully boys.
Bullies are cowards, and their cowardice is easily demonstrated when finally someone has the gumption to stand up to them.
If this is “Kevin Rudd’s Australia” is Sydney now reclining on the “Costa Brava”? The bullying of Costa to achieve the privatization of NSW electricity is a symptom of the contempt of the Iemma Government for the party’s rank and file and for trade unions . The unions contributed generously towards the survival of the government, but the Big End of town whispers constantly in the government’s ear. Corporate donations not rank and file chook raffles are what people like Costa want.
If Morris Iemma wants to survive he should dismiss Costa and start listening to the “working families” who voted him back into power.
Costa and those like him who have contempt for trade unionists and ordinary party members should be expelled from the Labor Party. This should be the first step towards the reconstruction of the party as a democratic political organization instead of being the tool of corporate or factional bully boys.
Bullies are cowards, and their cowardice is easily demonstrated when finally someone has the gumption to stand up to them.