Evaluating the 2020 Summit is a massive task which the Great Kevin has rightly decided cannot be guaranteed until the end of the year. It remains to be seen whether this is a Pizza Hut style deal where failure to deliver hot reasons will result in the delegates receiving their money back. Accordingly, Peregrine will devote two posts to the Summit. For openers, a brief look at perspectives of the Summit.
What you make of the Summit depends largely on your perspective. Conservatives largely consider it a contemptuous revival of Keating-era elitism, journalists a cynical political exercise in ideological suffocation, attendees a robust exchange of ideas and ultimate settlement on a surprising number of themes. Bloggers (of the idea-based rather than ideology-based kind) are divided between those who consider it the start of a new Rudd post-politics order, a stupendously unoriginal recycling of ideas and a wasted opportunity. Poor old Brendan Nelson does not seem to know what he thinks of it and appears to be still reeling from his encounter with the representative of the Sex Workers Union.
The Summit has again highlighted the discomfort Australians have with the idea of an elite group of intellectuals showing their faces in public, however it also offers the encouraging idea that we do not mind big thinking and ideas themselves. Nelson's political response could have been stronger, or at least coherent, if he had complimented the idea of the Summit but criticised the lack of ordinary Australians, or in the alternative, announced his own counter-summit, or some such gathering beyond his nebulous listening tour. The Summit's profile, focus, purpose and relevance stand in stark contrast to Brendan's aimless tour lacking both form and substance. If the good ship Nelson comes any further onto the reefs of irrelevance, he will be donning a black wig and taking up resident on Lygon Street.
In short, we like ideas, but as an egalitarian nation, we like our share in the conversation. The lesson from this weekend, a reiteration of Malcolm's Republic referendum, is talk down to the people at your peril. It will be very interesting to see how Liberal resident intellectual Malcolm Turnbull responds to the new climate of big thinking and government recasting given his form as head of the elitist vanguard.
Monday, April 21, 2008
Friday, April 18, 2008
Are we allergic to ideas?
There seems to be a strange disconnect in the political psyche: journalists and the people alike keep asking for policy, something to be done about the big issues of our time, whether that be climate change, the health system or education. Yet the most public attempt to gather these ideas and have a conversation about them, the upcoming 2020 Summit has been largely derided as a stunt, a cynical 'rubber-stamping' exercise and a replacement for the ordinary political process.
These comments seem premised on the idea that while our politicians may have muddled along to the point of near-crisis in many of our institutions and industries, somehow they will right the ship without any assistance from the outside world. Worse, any such body chosen to assist them amounts to some kind of intellectual quisling regime, not really contributing anything and only granting legitimacy to the preconceived policies of the government.
So either Rudd and the ALP have no ideas at all, or they have plenty and just want the imprimatur of the 'best and brightest' to put them beyond political reproach. This amounts to a vote of no confidence that either Rudd is incompetent and merely a master manipulator or that he is a fascist of high order. Both conclusions seem wide of the mark. The mere act of calling the Summit suggests a willingness to listen to the ideas of others, whereas former PM Howard would be lucky to listen to his own deputy, let alone those outside his ideological echo-chamber. At least two of the co-chairs have had successful careers on the other side of politics. Before anyone trawls up Howard's bipartisan Constitutional Convention, remember that he was forced into the republican debate by his predecessor's enthusiasm, and he became increasingly enthusiastic to scuttle the whole thing by supporting the 'No' case.
There is another possibility that Rudd actually believes that community elders can prove a source of wise counsel and ideas for the future. We hear a lot about intellectual capital and the like, so what on earth is wrong with actually using it? The normal policy making channels favoured by the political process include a lot of party hacks of limiting degrees of intellectual skill and life experience. Calling on the thoughts of such a diverse range of people from a multitude of perspectives can only add to the cross-pollination of ideas.
It seems strange that Rudd's policies on indigenous health and education and climate change have met with suspicion, long -term targets in search of a strategy. Yet at the same time, the implicit aim of the Summit is to produce possible intermediate steps to reach these and other long term goals. To criticise one of these arms in isolation is fair, to criticise both is verging on the cynical.
The Summit is not being set up as some permanent vehicle of policy development but as a mega-symposium, with participants sharing their somewhat abbreviated pitches, the distillation of a great deal of research, reflection and thinking. The entire exercise will cost the taxpayer next to nothing and could produce all sorts of ideas to throw into the future policy mix. The expectations of the Summit should be proportionately low, and then we may be astonished at what may flow from it. We may find out then whether we are in fact allergic to ideas and having to think for ourselves rather than delegating the task to our assorted politicians.
These comments seem premised on the idea that while our politicians may have muddled along to the point of near-crisis in many of our institutions and industries, somehow they will right the ship without any assistance from the outside world. Worse, any such body chosen to assist them amounts to some kind of intellectual quisling regime, not really contributing anything and only granting legitimacy to the preconceived policies of the government.
So either Rudd and the ALP have no ideas at all, or they have plenty and just want the imprimatur of the 'best and brightest' to put them beyond political reproach. This amounts to a vote of no confidence that either Rudd is incompetent and merely a master manipulator or that he is a fascist of high order. Both conclusions seem wide of the mark. The mere act of calling the Summit suggests a willingness to listen to the ideas of others, whereas former PM Howard would be lucky to listen to his own deputy, let alone those outside his ideological echo-chamber. At least two of the co-chairs have had successful careers on the other side of politics. Before anyone trawls up Howard's bipartisan Constitutional Convention, remember that he was forced into the republican debate by his predecessor's enthusiasm, and he became increasingly enthusiastic to scuttle the whole thing by supporting the 'No' case.
There is another possibility that Rudd actually believes that community elders can prove a source of wise counsel and ideas for the future. We hear a lot about intellectual capital and the like, so what on earth is wrong with actually using it? The normal policy making channels favoured by the political process include a lot of party hacks of limiting degrees of intellectual skill and life experience. Calling on the thoughts of such a diverse range of people from a multitude of perspectives can only add to the cross-pollination of ideas.
It seems strange that Rudd's policies on indigenous health and education and climate change have met with suspicion, long -term targets in search of a strategy. Yet at the same time, the implicit aim of the Summit is to produce possible intermediate steps to reach these and other long term goals. To criticise one of these arms in isolation is fair, to criticise both is verging on the cynical.
The Summit is not being set up as some permanent vehicle of policy development but as a mega-symposium, with participants sharing their somewhat abbreviated pitches, the distillation of a great deal of research, reflection and thinking. The entire exercise will cost the taxpayer next to nothing and could produce all sorts of ideas to throw into the future policy mix. The expectations of the Summit should be proportionately low, and then we may be astonished at what may flow from it. We may find out then whether we are in fact allergic to ideas and having to think for ourselves rather than delegating the task to our assorted politicians.
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Just because its spin, doesn't mean they won't win
Much as I agree with Mr Andrew Bolt that free speech should be encouraged, I prefer not to have a torrent of that speech funnelled down my alternative media channels. That said, it has given me the opportunity to read his blog firsthand. Bolt has clearly set up his stall as chief prosecutor of the Great Kevin for crimes against statistics. Bolt's argument boils down to everything Rudd does is premised upon media management - i.e. it is spin - and hence it is of no consequence to the good governance of the nation. Rudd's astronomic preferred PM ratings are thus evidence of the greatest con perpetrated on the Australian people.
Spin is a useful tool in two great arenas of Australian experience. One is in politics, where politicians of all persuasions aim to put the issues in the best light for their side. The other is in sport, specifically cricket, where the ability to impart prodigious spin on the ball is one of the greatest assets a bowler can have. The key here is that it is one thing for a batsman to recognise the ball is spinning, but if seeing the spin was enough, Shane Warne would be nothing but an out-of-work poker player. Batsmen have to devise a method to anticipate the spin and respond to it with some smart footwork or composed thinking of their own.
At present, Australian conservatives are as hapless as the infamous Daryll Cullinan was against Warne. Currently Bolt's spin odyssey, where nothing Rudd can say or do has any substance, betrays the collective political poverty of conservative politics. The Libs and Nats are getting comprehensively smashed because they have old ideological struggles, internal machinations and arguments over nomenclature rather than offering alternative policies. Worse, the Federal party seems to be in freefall, with Nelson's leadership marked by walking contradictions.
Whereas Howard constructed a universe of his own making through wedging a hapless and flat-footed Labor party, Nelson is seeking to oppose the government by constructing either media beatups or acts of historical revisionism. He seems petty, carping, confused and irrelevant, a situation reflected in the preferred PM ratings.
The worst part about the spin defence is that it feeds in to a perception that no effort is required to win, indeed your side is the only party with the answers to the great questions. This leads to laziness, arrogance and an unhealthy sense of self-righteousness. The irony is that the more this attitude prevails, the less electable the party becomes.
The traditional division of politics has been on economic policy. What has happened is that Labor has adopted many of the economic policies of the conservative side and hence become indistinguishable. Only Howard's visible obsession with liquidating working conditions caused division to appear. Labor is now rebadging the debate to one where the community is their focus while grasping individualism is the residue left for conservatives. As the issue is now economic and service delivery, Labor is constructing impregnable fortresses against oppositions obsessed by foibles. While the conservatives rail, they become ever more irrelevant, left to fight over labels rather than ideas.
Spin is a useful tool in two great arenas of Australian experience. One is in politics, where politicians of all persuasions aim to put the issues in the best light for their side. The other is in sport, specifically cricket, where the ability to impart prodigious spin on the ball is one of the greatest assets a bowler can have. The key here is that it is one thing for a batsman to recognise the ball is spinning, but if seeing the spin was enough, Shane Warne would be nothing but an out-of-work poker player. Batsmen have to devise a method to anticipate the spin and respond to it with some smart footwork or composed thinking of their own.
At present, Australian conservatives are as hapless as the infamous Daryll Cullinan was against Warne. Currently Bolt's spin odyssey, where nothing Rudd can say or do has any substance, betrays the collective political poverty of conservative politics. The Libs and Nats are getting comprehensively smashed because they have old ideological struggles, internal machinations and arguments over nomenclature rather than offering alternative policies. Worse, the Federal party seems to be in freefall, with Nelson's leadership marked by walking contradictions.
Whereas Howard constructed a universe of his own making through wedging a hapless and flat-footed Labor party, Nelson is seeking to oppose the government by constructing either media beatups or acts of historical revisionism. He seems petty, carping, confused and irrelevant, a situation reflected in the preferred PM ratings.
The worst part about the spin defence is that it feeds in to a perception that no effort is required to win, indeed your side is the only party with the answers to the great questions. This leads to laziness, arrogance and an unhealthy sense of self-righteousness. The irony is that the more this attitude prevails, the less electable the party becomes.
The traditional division of politics has been on economic policy. What has happened is that Labor has adopted many of the economic policies of the conservative side and hence become indistinguishable. Only Howard's visible obsession with liquidating working conditions caused division to appear. Labor is now rebadging the debate to one where the community is their focus while grasping individualism is the residue left for conservatives. As the issue is now economic and service delivery, Labor is constructing impregnable fortresses against oppositions obsessed by foibles. While the conservatives rail, they become ever more irrelevant, left to fight over labels rather than ideas.
Peregrine rises phoenix-like from the ashes of the Olympic flame
...or some other suitable hyperbole. This blog has been in hiatus for the last few weeks, having something of a holiday while the mother ship (alias Blogotariat) settles itself down after its problems with Russian hackers.
more shortly
more shortly
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)