Summit of the smug self righteous

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd opened yesterday summit of his government’s anointed self-righteous with a call to let “fresh air” into Australian thinking but the quotes from New Age poet Kahlil Gibran and the soundtrack from Over The Rainbow gave his retro game away.

The fix was in before the invitations went out to those deemed suitable by Mr Rudd and his summit co-chair Glyn Davis, a Rudd family friend and former colleague from Queensland’s unlamented Goss Labor government, now swathed in academic garb as Vice Chancellor of Melbourne University. But at the end of the first day, some of the delegates were criticising the running of the “government by butchers’ paper” talkfest, saying it was certain sessions has been “chaotic” with “disconnected” ideas being thrown forward in an “unstructured” manner. Others said it seemed that the government ministers in the sessions were getting desperate for “good ideas” they could turn in to the co-chair-in-chief, and were cutting short delegates who wanted to explain or tease-out their contributions, and that there were logistical problems despite the government’s pre-planning. As the female Aboriginal elder said at the beginning of her ritual “traditional” welcome to Canberra: “Oh, dear, oh me.” Faced with 1002 delegates who had ridden to the Peoples Republic of the Capital Territory on their favourite hobby horses, there was little else she could say. Like Gibran, a favourite with those who throw the I-Ching before deciding to answer the telephone, there was more than a whiff of patchouli oil about the ideas of the ageing New Agers gathered to rediscover and celebrate their inner activist at the talkfest. There was the promised sprinkling of celebrity delegates not known for their cerebral contributions to the universe and a clutch wrinkle-browed self-styled public intellectuals but the invitees with its over-representation of political activists from the Left-leaning GetUp organisation, by no means represented the diversity of opinion in the nation. For a conference to canvass ideas on topics such as climate change and water without hearing from an expert such as Adelaide University’s ecological economist Professor Mike Young seems plain ridiculous but then Professor Young was a critic of the sleight-of-hand water deal trumpeted by Mr Rudd after the last COAG meeting. That obvious oversight aside, it also seems extraordinary that some of the actual invitees were not placed in the groups with which it would seem they would have been able to make their best contribution. Thus, former NSW Premier Bob Carr was placed in the millionaire-rich environment of the economic committee while his expertise in government was ignored. Could this have been because he is vehemently opposed to one of the principal ideas that will come from the governance committee – the noxious charter of rights which will transfer powers from our elected representatives into the hands of the legal profession? Similarly, a former federal president of the ALP, Warren Mundine, was placed in the national security forum though he is one of the nation’s foremost Aboriginal identities. Was this because he has vigorously championed the right of Aboriginal Australians to enjoy the same ability to own or sell property as other Australians, a view violently at odds with that of inner-urban ALP branches who want to see Aboriginal Australians in remote communities locked into a framework of communal ownership? If there was an independent thought voiced in opposition to the generally anodyne motherhood statements, it went unheard, but that may have been because it was estimated by the facilitator of the arts group that delegates would have less than five minutes each to make their points in the groupings which were charged to work at producing one Big Idea, three policies (which must be low budget) and three goals to present at tonight’s plenary session. Mr Rudd’s pre-conference Big Idea of family-destroying one-stop shop baby farms set a benchmark for other ideas that flowed, indigenous treaties, greater recognition of the arts, use of alternative energy and the other predictable suggestions which Young Labor usually champions. It was clear that having been invited, no-one wished to grumble at achieving some degree of recognition from their like-minded fellows, though some academics were wondering how they would be able to charge the cost of the weekend to their faculties. As with the other 20/20 conferences held by other leaders in other nations, from Malaysia to the UK, a torrent of well-meant ideas will doubtless flow from this process but whether the substantial triumphs over the trivial is another matter. As for yesterday, after the ABC was proposed as the cultural hub of the nation by one delegate, everyone agreed that the luncheon quiche had really hit the spot.