2020
14 Apr 2008
View from the Youth Summit
One hundred young Australians converged on Canberra over the weekend to make recommendations for next week's Australia 2020 Summit. Find out what they chose as their 10 best ideas
Productivity Agenda: Paid Parental Leave ProgramA national paid parental leave program for both men and women, which includes incentives that promote affordable and accessible childcare, will help to address the challenges of workplace participation for all Australians. This scheme will increase productivity at work, provide incentives for employers to accommodate a healthy work/life balance, and help to address gender imbalances in the workplace.
Infrastructure: Youth for Youth Community Infrastructure
The creation of amalgamated business and community centres for youth will encourage entrepreneurship and community-building activities. Readily available information to aid the professional development of youth and opportunities to network with other "change-makers" will help to break down barriers to participation and will provide young artists, entrepreneurs and those active in community service with the physical infrastructure they need to implement their ideas. A focus on the inclusion of disadvantaged youth will serve to increase the number of joint projects run by young Australians as well as community participation.
Sustainability and Climate Change: Australian Sustainability Challenge
Climate change is a global problem that has many local solutions. The Australian Sustainability Challenge would create an incentive for local governments to improve their sustainability through constructive competition. Local government areas would be awarded points for various activities like: increasing the percentage of renewable energy being used, increasing the percentage of constituents traveling via public transport/foot/bicycle, increasing the percentage of water being heated via solar hot water/gas, increasing the percentage of native vegetation through tree planting programs, and so on.
The areas that achieve the highest number of points would be rewarded with a substantial federal grant, to be spent on a local community priority. Local governments will be judged annually with the results being publicly announced across all States so local climate change achievements are proudly acknowledged and celebrated.
The Challenge would empower local communities to work together, educate each other and think outside the square. By combining the Challenge with meaningful national schemes that encourage sustainable practices (eg feed-in-tariffs for renewable energy, funding for local energy/water cooperatives, investment in public transport/bicycle lanes, and so on), all Australians will be encouraged to engage in our ‘sustainability' agenda.
Rural Australia: Rural Futures Development Bank
A funding strategy aimed at supporting research and development into new agricultural technologies. Specifically, research and development will be directed at ways in which traditional agricultural practices can be adapted to best deal with the new conditions brought upon Australia by climate change, such as changing temperatures and decreased water availability.
The initiative will also include the extension of existing programs designed to educate growers on sustainable technologies and additional assistance for growers in the take up of these new technologies and the development of more efficient irrigation and water management techniques. Potentially, new innovations in Australian agriculture will be shared with our neighbours and Australia will remain the global leader in combating climate change.
Health: Primary Healthcare Project Committee
A federally funded peak body incorporating members of non-government organisations and government departments focused on expanding existing preventative health strategies that have proved successful. We will need to identify best practice models, both locally and abroad, and support these programs to be implemented on a national level
Communities and Families: National Migrant and Refugee Settlement Strategy
Using a process of widespread consultation with local migrants and refugee service providers, state governments and relevant stakeholders, this strategy will measure the proportion of migrants and refugees who access available health, language and capacity building services. It will also evaluate the literacy levels of migrant and refugee communities and measure the employment rate and length of unemployment. Moreover, this holistic approach will help the broader Australian community accommodate migrant and refugee settlement.
Indigenous Australia: National Dialogue Towards a Treaty
The political and legal recognition of Indigenous Australia should be pursued through the signing of a treaty or similar document between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australia. The negotiation process will ensure that all Australians can participate in a national dialogue that promotes understanding between individuals and communities. A treaty will create a foundation for a new relationship between all Australians, which allows us to make meaningful change in practical policies and programs.
Creative Australia: New Funding Opportunities for the Arts
We need to extend funding beyond project-based-funding to allow artists and arts organisations to be sustainable. It is proposed that a cohort-based supplementary income grants scheme be established. This pool of funds would allow artists to draw on income funding as they develop their practice and to engage with emerging and established artists in their fields. Moreover, funding to support arts workers and auxiliary organisations needs to be made available to allow for long term planning and collaboration. This approach represents a genuine commitment to supporting artists to develop their creative and professional practice.
Australian Governance: Vote for a Better Vote
Enhancing participation in the electoral processes is vital to ensuring our political representatives reflect the aspirations of the Australian people. Particularly important is ensuring greater engagement in electoral processes by disadvantaged and marginalized people.
We envision an Australia where citizens are automatically enrolled to vote, a process crucial to removing existing barriers to electoral participation. Automatic enrolment would necessitate cooperation between the Australian Electoral Commission and national agencies such as the Australian Tax Office, Centrelink and Medicare. There also needs to be significant investment in engaging electorally disadvantaged Australians - specifically those who are homeless or without a fixed address - by the Australian Electoral Commission.
Further, to build a more participatory 2020, the age at which people are eligible to vote must be lowered to 16. Sixteen-year-olds work, pay income tax, pay GST, drive and can join the army. They must be enfranchised so they can have a say in Government policies that affect them.
At polling places, we also believe there should be the ability to vote via computer, to save paper and speed up vote counting. We believe this aspect of our proposed electoral reform for a stronger, more democratic 2020 should be optional.
Australia's Future in the World: Track2 for Access to Essential Medicines
As a complement to the current drug patent systems, this mechanism rewards innovators in proportion to the global health impact of their interventions. To access this payment stream, stakeholders would allow the open manufacture, distribution and sale of their products. Consequently, diseases which disproportionately affect the poor become profitable targets of research and development.
By making this option available for specific medicines, the price of drugs will be driven down to near production cost. As the price is based on actual health impact, pharmaceutical companies also have an incentive to upgrade health services in disadvantaged areas, furthering their contribution to our global community.
To download the full Australia 2020 Youth Summit Communiqué, to be distributed to 2020 Summit participants this weekend - including 30 additional ideas for Australia - click here.
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wtf is "a cohort-based supplementary income grants scheme"?
oh, it’s the dole. since when do young people talk like that? i just don’t understand their music anymore.
Re Indigenous Australia: a treaty. And that’s it ? The remote populations is dropping, there are horrific rates of ENT and STD disease due mainly to the neglect and irresponsibility of parents, and these kids talk about a bloody treaty ? Christ, give us strength. There is abysmal education levels in Indigenous settlements (and rural towns, and outer suburbs), horrific domestic violence and stupid addiction and crime rates and early deaths from lifestyle choices, and these city kids talk about nothing but a fging treaty ? It amazes me how people can keep their heads simultaneously in the clouds and up their arses. Lovely kids, but so out of touch, it really makes me fear for the future. I thought the progressives were out of touch, but this next generation takes the cake.
Get something straight, kids: Indigenous people are everywhere, in the remote areas, yes, but in towns and cities: there are more Indigenous people in Brisbane than in remote NT. And most of them couldn’t give a shit about at treaty. There are (up to the end of last year) nearly twenty two thousand Indigenous university grauduates (sorry, Dazza, I have to say it whenever I can), and maybe fifty thousand by 2020.
A treaty might satisfy the Indigenous industry and the white middle-classes, but it doesn’t put one more loaf on the table, so to speak, or help one more Indigenous kid through uni, or add shit to one more community enterprise (well, except the odd dance party or didj player or exorbitant authentic-experience tourist venture). Scholarships for every Indigenous school-child, say ten thousand dollars a year right through school and uni - now, that might be something that would work. But not airy-fairy enough for you ? Then either find something more useful or … spend more time learning about Indigenous realities. (I originally wrote something a bit more pithy after the dots, but I thought small children might read it).
Joe
To be fair, Joe, if you look at the document linked at the bottom of the article, they also put forward three other ideas in that arena, on health, education and home ownership.
Thanks, Rachel.
As a husband and parent of Aboriginal people, I am very keenly aware of the role of education, but I take your point that we can’t be too hard on a group of kids trying to come up with brilliant ideas for 2020. It’s just that they seem to be advocating more of the same crap that has got so many Indigenous people in this ghastly mess in the first place.
The vast majority of Indigenous people live in the coastal strip from Cairns around to Adelaide, plus Perth and Darwin, and many of the rest of the Indigenous population lives in other urban centres. So perhaps 80 % live in urban centres now.
Nobody depends on hunting and gathering for a living.
About sixty thousand Indigenous people have been to university at some time or another, and currently about nine thousand are studying there, overwhelmingly in mainstream courses. About six thousand of those will graduate. Half of the entire young population will, from about 1990 onwards, go to uni at some time in their lives.
The question is: is the main purpose of education for cultural maintenance, (or is this the business of communities and families and in particular parents ?) OR is education a weapon for economic security, for social inclusion, as, politically speaking,an expression of the equal rights of all indigenous people to a ‘compulsory, secular and free’ education from the age of five to the age of fifteen or sixteen ?
For forty years, I fervently believed in Aboriginal self-determination - we studied courses which we thought might be most useful, we lived and worked for years in a small community, me as a labourer, while my wife opened up and ran the pre-school; since then, we have worked for twenty five years in tertiary education to contribute to producing that body of thousands of graduates. I will always believe in self-determination as a goal, but I no longer believe that it is possible in the near future, given the shockingly poor education levels of people at settlements, and the corruption and incompetence of their management, and their antagonism to any outsiders with ideas. Perhaps once people gain a wide range of skills which can be used back in settlements AND the people at settlements welcome them back to initiate enterprises, then self-determination may have a chance of beginning, but I don’t think it will happen in my lifetime.
So shoot the messenger.
Joe
If the 2020 Summit is a bit of a non-event, the youth event was always going to be more so. Unfortunately, the process used to choose the participants is always going produce the most articulate and least thoughtful and inventive people - those that do or will soon clog up our law schools - and the product will parrot the dullest efforts of the main event.
Unfortunately, the cliche "Youth is wasted on the young" is correct. Equally unfortunately, we seem determined to elect as our leaders those who have never grown up.
Grants for local councils….yeh, that would work. Local government has a great record with managing special projects (not).
This sounds more like a UN summit.
They are a lovely bunch of kids, and I wish every one of them well. I guess a lot of us oldies are a bit envious of all that idealism and energy and passion, which might explain the petty sniping at least on my part. But a lot of what they seem to be advocating, by accounts in the media, were either motherhood statements or demands for what is already in train, or for what sounds great but has been somewhat discredited.
Still, the best luck to them: they will need it in the world that we will bequeath to them and their children.
Joe
In response to all of the comments here i find them highly insultive and very ignorant of what actually went on at the youth 2020 summit
not being in the topic group that discussed the idea of indigenous australia i cant say fully what was their back ground for this treaty, however the point of the summit was to come up with ideas that would be implimentable by the year 2020, it was unfortunatly a very quick process. im sure you can understand that 2 days is not nearly enough time to come up with the total solution. and as for the the 10 ideas, they were 10 ideas of about 700. its not that all 700 would be too hard to impliment, its that we didnt have enough time to go through them all.
its the exact thing that we at the summit were affraid of, that the wider public wouldnt take our suggestions seriously.
to pick 100 out of 1300, those 100 have to pretty aware of the world around them and i can grantee you that those 100 people were all and are all impassioned people committed to making a difference.
2 days is no where near enough time to solve any problem and thats not what we were trying to do. we were mearly suggesting problems and ways that maybe they could be addressed
jenjen "wtf is "a cohort-based supplementary income grants scheme"?"
This is obviously not written by our youth. I wonder which of Rudd’s minders pulled these "outcomes" out of his bag at the last minute after all the directionless chatting and said "so we are basically agreeing on ‘a cohort-based supplementary income grants scheme’, and a few other ideas you all ‘wanted’?"
It goes to show how biased the selection process was that if you put up these ideas at referendum most of them would be voted down by the real majority.
joelunch, you are exactly what the youth of this country worry about, of course it was writen by youth it was writen by smart, involved youth that want a say in their countries direction. just because you cant understand that doesnt mean that the rest of australia is as stupid as you
joelunch - Keep in mind that the "youth" you speak of were aged up to 25 years old. Not exactly "a bunch of kids", as Joe put it. I’m sure plenty of them know what "a cohort-based supplementary income grants scheme" is, even if, as jenjen alludes, it isn’t the clearest use of language in the world.
And sheamus, I appreciate your desire to defend yourself (you have some valid points), but it’s generally a good idea to proofread your work when you’re trying to look smart. Yes, even on the internet.
I’m afraid I find many of the comments to be arrogant and ignorant. There is far too much of a preparedness by many to dismiss what younger people have to say, to stereotype them, for instance as too idealistic or naive or alternatively, as uninterested and more concerned with drugs and alcohol and ignorant of the past. As others have pointed out the recommendations concerning Indigenous peoples do not only comprise a Treaty. If the apology was important then a treaty, in some form, is worth considering also. We have passed the stage of that deceitful "practical reconciliation" phase.
As for the comments about the dole, clearly the notion that it is everyone for themselves is still part of some people’s philosophy: so what is it exactly that makes us human and civilized?
We adults are making a very poor fist of things indeed, in Australia, especially NSW, and around the World. As older people, we are in no position whatsoever, to our scorn, especially in so patronising a way, on the outcomes of this summit.
And in conclusion, how can we ask for consultation and then condemn opportunities for discussion and presentation of ideas to those we have elected to govern us? It might be a good thing if we got more young people into the governing process and pushed out some fo the older people. There certainly are many examples of just how aware and far sighted this ‘cohort’ is!
Don’t worry desgriffin we aren’t just having a go at these ridiculous outcomes because of the age of the participants. We will be giving the older peoples summit a similar critique. I just don’t think the general public speak in polly-speak the say way Rudd’s minders do - hence my suspicion as to where the participents or the outcomes actualy came from.
Totally agree with you joelunch.
The general population will be looking for some truly inspired ideas after this weeekend…anything less and it will be the same response.
Having said that, I’ve been to band camps that came up with better ideas than these ones.
as a delegate to the youth 2020:
sheamus is right, this is the usual kind of "what do young people know" that the delegation was concerned about. i am far to cynical (or is that realistic) to think that the result was going to be otherwise. but does that mean i should have declined my invitation to attend? or not to have applied at all? of course not! there are a lot of good, solid ideas that have come out of that summit and i stand in solidarity beside my 99 fellow delegates. we WILL stand behind these ideas, and we WILL make them happen, no matter how much the miserable babyboomers try to put a downer on it. we need more people out there like desgriffin.
as a member of the creative australia group:
i am directly responsible for promoting a government funding strategy that compliments existing project-based funding with a long-term, sustainable, income-style funding structure. For an emerging artist there is only limited income streams to support an emerging arts practice. To produce creative works you need money. You can try your hand at the (one-off project) grants game, you can give in to working for creative companies or you can work in unrelated areas (hospitality, retail, etc). grants are hard to get as an unknown and the last two are hardly doing wonders for your creative practice. you have to wonder, how creative can you be after an eight hour session of waiting tables or pouring beers, or better still, creating artistic works as commodities that are owned by your employer.
to become sustainable you need more skills that how to hold your paintbrush. artists need more than a technical proficiency in their art practice in order to survive and thrive. they require practical skills such as accounting, administration, legal, promotion and other ‘business’ skills. where do you find the time (or the money) to do that if you’re working 9 - 5 or worse, hospitality hours? we need a system where individual artists can apply for a grant that pays them regular payments so they have the time/money to invest in themselves; to invest in broadening their skills, resources and networks. This is very different to the one-off, time-limited, scope-limited grants currently available.
to get a better idea of what i mean, read http://plastikkpoet.blogspot.com/2008/04/australia-2020-youth-summit-202…
and "cohort" means "peer" in this sense. we did not want to see a funding structure such as this be divvied up solely by the australia council, which isn’t known for its willingness to fund people who it hasn’t come into contact with before. the idea is that artists at various stages of the funding program are part of the process for examining incoming applications.
i am so much of a realist in fact that i know that government "speak" a certain way. we needed to write out ideas in "policy speak" because that’s what is more likely to be picked up. government like ideas that they don’t have to do all the leg-work for. and if we did not deliver an articulate, well-considered set of ideas that they would be dismissed.
I love the broad-reaching stereotypical statements that some of us are making here, claiming either that these ideas are either somehow planted by the government or otherwise are not worth listening to because the writers are too young.
On the idea of an indigenous treaty, on inspection, its such a complex idea that goes to the core of the Australian identity. RMG, I agree with you that there are other issues that need to be dealt with, and these are covered in the 40 top ideas in the Youth Summit communique, but what I disagree with is you broad-spray at what the participants must have been like at the 2020 Youth Summit. An indigenous treaty is an idea aimed at reconciling our past and integrating the various indigenous stories into our national identity. This is a complex idea that requires an understanding of psychology and sociology to be truly appreciated. If this is what the young people came up with then it is truly inspired and credit should be given.
The fact that young people are participating in our democracy and are being given opportunities to do so is a first step in a process of true participative democracy, and I think at the very least we should give our young people a fair hearing.
joelunch, ringo and jenjen
I can assure you that Rudd’s minder did not write ‘cohort-based supplementary income grants scheme.’
I wrote it. Along with the other delegates in the ‘creative australia’ group as we tried to compress our discussion on the need for a new funding model for australian artists into a paragraph. The extended details of the model were recorded and I presume will be released with Appendix C of the communique.
We were trying to describe a system by which emerging artists in particular fields (cohorts) were eligible for sustainability grants as opposed to project-based funding and in addition to current welfare payments that are available to all australians.
I am proud of the ideas from the 2020 Youth Summit. As one of the delegates, I am proud of the effort that young people exhibited to actually think creatively and yet achievably about the future of Australia. This was no token effort. The young people thought seriously about how change could and should be made.
First things first. Let’s talk seriously about the place of our young. Let’s not hide behind stereotypes. Its amazes me, either we are all larrikan, apathetic, party-goers, or we are ambitious, blood-sucking, wannabe politicians.
To those older than us - we are not threatening. We do not come to erase the values you created or believe in. We want to build on success, not undermine it. We understand legacy. We understand our reality. We want to be pragmatic idealists - to believe in something bigger and better, and yet think practically about how the future we want can and should be created.
How sad it is that we are unable to have a place for visionaries in this country, that we have come to accept mediocrity.
Regarding a treaty, I believe it can be done. The young Indigenous and non-Indigenous people (from urban, rural and remote settings) in my group believed it could be done. Not only can it serve to reconceptualise our national identity and recognise the past, a past full of mistakes and short-term thinking. A treaty can also set out the guidelines or principles on which the nation builds and maintains effective Indigenous policies and programs.
The relationship between non-Indigenous and Indigenous Australia is broken. It needs fixing. And while we tinker at the edges of policy changes and program funding, we will get nowhere. If we want to look at the evidence of what works, we will look to Canada and New Zealand. Those countries created a foundation based on treaty rights and self-determination - and THEN built clever policies and programs on the basis of those principles. We have nothing like that here in Australia.
I am not angry at the above comments that disrespect my peers - peers who believe in this country and gave up their time to discuss the future. I am disappointed. Shame on those who do not believe in their young.
But no matter - because we believe in ourselves and each other. And that is all the support I need. Because I know in 2020, we will respect our young better than those generations before us. Thank you to those negative people for reminding me why we need to.
Firstly i’d just like to say that I wish we had been spoon-fed ideas to mull over. It would have made our weekend alot easier.
But we weren’t. The fact of the matter, and one that I am very proud of, is that as a group of 15 to 25yr olds, we sat down and asked ourselves "Hey, what can we do to support our growing industry of creative arts? And more importantly, what plan can we have implemented as a part of daily life by the year 2020?" So over a course of only two days, we came up with an answer.
That answer is the cohort-based supplementary income grants scheme. No JenJen, not the dole. This scheme has been designed so that working artists can continue to do the work that they love, and sustain themselves from day to day life, knowing that once their current project is completed, they will still have money to put food on the table.
Joelunch, shame on you. If you don’t think a group of young people have brains enough to understand what the words ‘cohort’ and ‘scheme’ mean, then maybe you should make some time to actually talk to us. Sure, we’re comfortable with using more ordinary words, but we understand that in order to make ourselves heard we need to ‘speak the speak, walk the walk’. The choice of words we used to get our message across explains exactly what we are lobbying for.
I for one am extremely proud of not only myself, but everybody else involved in this whole process, from the youth who aopplied to get in and did not, to the organisers of the event. Thankyou Kevin Rudd!
The fact that the media painted this Youth Summit as "being invited to Christmas lunch to find yourself sitting at the kid’s table" and focussed more on the details of pizza nights and alcohol bans was bad enough. But to see everyday Australians cut these intelligent and impassioned young people down is simply saddening.
Of course, there will be debate as to what are the best policies and what needs further revision but to raise suspicion that these ideas were the brainwaves of Rudd’s minders, or that the participants were too stupid to raise issues of immediate importance encourages me to believe that Australians are much more cynical and suspicious than before.
These people came together in Canberra, not because they knew how to write a good application but because they have already achieved more than the average Australian will in their whole lives.
Some of those participants were young mothers, some were homeless for much of their lives, some have organised events for hundreds of disenfranchised and marginalised people and some have travelled the world promoting their causes. Some have come from privileged backgrounds and will go on to study law (they don’t aspire to practice commercial or property law might I add but want to champion human rights or join the Environmental Defender’s Office), while some are advocating sustainability, health and education in innovative and inspiring ways. One participant even wants to be the nation’s first Indigenous Prime Minister.
I’d hardly pigeonhole them in with the least thoughtful and inventive people of the world. Quite the opposite.
I left Canberra with a feeling that has been lacking for half of my life: a real sense of hope for the future. Because from what I could tell, only a handful of these people will go on to lead the nation or run big business. The majority of them will, in fact, be working feverishly in the background as the quiet achievers ensuring a brighter future for our next generations. This is because the sense of humility and privilege in the air for even being in Canberra was so obvious, you could almost smell it.
So, I ask you, what would you have really accomplished in a weekend? With 99 other people around you trying to articulate their vision for the future, of course, yours would have been accommodated for but would have gone through an intensive process of adaptation and moulding.
Judge us not on the top 10 ideas you have already started to critique and slander, but on the visions we created and the overwhelming sense of cohesion in where the youth of today want to take Australia into the future.
i thank the members of previous generations for the input into this discussion
As a young person, a territorian and a health worker, I see the need for a new way forward in the relationship between our indigenous and non-indig people.
After the long awaited apology the treaty is a practical step we can take as individuals to lay work based on mutual respect, power and knowledge to create practical policies and program development, to start to address the well cited differences in health & education for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Isanders.
To the anonymous pseudonyms who have decided to attack the ideas generated by the Youth Summit - you have, to your own great detriment, entirely missed the point.
The 2020 Summits were never meant to solve all of the world’s problems. The summits are a process by which we can investigate some ideas which might go some way towards making Australia a better place to live.
Last month, over 1000 passionate, articulate and intelligent young people went to great lengths to apply for a spot at an event where they thought they might be able to contribute to the broader fabric of Australian society.
In a short amount of time the one hundred young people who attended the summit developed a variety of ideas into positive programs that will obviously need further augmentation. Those ideas will also, obviously, be the subject of further debate.
As one of the delegates to the summit, it is my hope that that debate will include contributions of significantly more substance than you have added so far.
I am particularly proud of the efforts those of us in the governance stream went to to develop a system which has the potential to increase the number of Australian citizens who are enrolled to vote. Our system of automatic enrolment, while still requiring some further development, could have a significant impact on the Australian electoral system by increasing the number of young voters.
The final point I’d like to make, is that there are several secondary benefits to a process like this. One of those benefits is that the summits should encourage people from all around the country to contribute their ideas for Australia’s future to the public realm. If you wish to contribute yours, by all means do.
Owen Wareham
To those who wish to use this forum as a cathartic process, and express their frustrations about the political process, you are most welcome. However, I would ask you to first read the 24-page communiqué, and then to consider the ideas that were canvassed there.
I say to you, ofcourse a three sentences description of an innovative idea is going to be broad and aspirational. It is the finesse, the policy statements behind the ideas, behind the vision that really demonstrate the value of these ideas. In the group I will be representing this weekend (productivity), we tackled the idea of how we could improve Australian productivity. Implicitly, we dealt with concerns about the aging population, accelerated climate change and the impact of the new regional powers on the Australian economy. We developed ideas involving paid parental leave. We argued for a revaluation of our teachers and linking their pay to aptitude not seniority. Why? Because no curriculum works without good teachers and 30 per cent of our young people suffer below international standards in literacy. For the cynics who can’t see the link, search the peer-reviewed literature on the topic and if you’re still not convinced, call the Productivity Commission.
In the case of parental leave, for the first time we set out a return-to-work programme that was balanced and economical. It involved a 24 week P (that’s P for Peter not Penny) Paternity and Maternity leave scheme, supported by government funds up to the living wage, and supplemented by the employer in the order of 25 per cent. This would be supplemented by more public-private partnerships in childcare, direct investment in community based childcare, and a return to work program that would be available to those who needed it. Why? Because there is a myth that we are at full employment, and there is a myth that the baby-bonus is having a substantial effect. The key to productivity is to allow people to raise their children in early childhood and return to the workforce as fast as possible. This is ground-breaking because it’s simple, it is intelligent, it addresses gender-imbalances at home, it raises the effectiveness of our human capital in the short-term and it supports our children in a critical time of growth for the long-term.
To those who attempt to excuse themselves for their lack of reasoned argument and their blatant disrespect for young people by beginning their sentences with: ‘I’m sure they’re nice people’, I’m sure you’re all nice people and I say to you: an idea that is simple and creates positive change is innovative if it has never been tried before. An idea that does so and comes out of a new approach to youth participation is something that should be applauded.
Yours sincerely,
Sid Chakrabarti
Sid, your proposed P & M leave does not sound simple. More PPPs. Investment in community childcare AND return to work to make up a supplement in addition to the government + employer input!?!?!?!
Want simplicity? Try the Norwegian model (and it actually works).
You have all misinterpreted disagreement as an affront to your efforts and sincerity to achieve something.
I don’t doubt any of your intentions or hard work. Unfortunately the proposals are unoriginal and uninspired. Sorry, that’s all there is to it. Drop the ‘why are you being horrible to us?’ line and come up with something new.
The youth are the future.
They have a vested interest in getting the present right.
So why are they not asking what they can do for Australia rather than what Aus can do for them?
The top 10 should be.
1. Think Federal act local
2. They can help prepare and deliver meals on wheels to the elderly
3. They can transport and provide company for the elderly
4. They can assist with children’s issues at schools.
5. They can clean up the streets, remove graffiti and tend lawns and gardens.
6. They can involve themselves in neighbourhood watch and look out for suspicious persons and activities
7. They can dob in porn and other vicious websites on the internet.
8. They can be enlisted to provide volunteer services at crowded train stations and bus stops. Direct people at busy times and events.
9. Help the disabled and elderly at designated disability car spaces and dob in those who clearly are not really using the spaces lawfully.
10. Help as aides to hospital staff who are already stretched to their limits.
I could write another ten more off the top of my head but we would’nt want to tax the little darlings now would we?
im so glad that im not the only one here putting my voice in. clearly the idealism of the 2020 is not dead and nor will it go away
ringo clearly has no idea that Australia is its own unique country and hey if we come up with ideas why not use them, i cant begin to tell you the problems with importing other countries ideas and using them here it just doesnt work.
and ringo may you just look around you, the youth of this nation have fully shut you down, and it was all done so because we all believe that we wont just go away and that our ideas are crap. how dare you say they are unoriginal! were you there!
no because its so much easier to critise than to actually put your hand and up and want to make the world a better place.
unlike you who hide in the comfort of cyber land and make snipered shots at people
For the people who think that the outcomes of the Summit were fed to us by Rudd’s minders, just wait and see which of our suggestions the government disagrees with. Sure, it’ll blast a hole in your argument, but it’ll then give the "the young people were naive for thinking that they were ever going to be listened to" people a chance to have their say.
For those who think that all the young people at the Youth Summit were out of touch, please don’t forget to talk to the young mums in the group, the refugees, migrants and indigenous, the ones who fear walking down the street in their town for fear of being killed (sorry to be so specific, but this person’s perspective truly affected me), the disabled and the formerly homeless - all of whom were able to bring these perspectives yet speak with positivity and true vision for our country, despite experiencing being trodden down in many ways.
For the young people who I worked alongside at the Youth Summit who spoke with pride at the opportunity to show the rest of Australia the great things that our young people can do, if given the chance, I hope you know you’ve done just that, despite what some may have said about our group. We’ve shown them great things, even if they all weren’t looking.
I am a 24 year old who has been speaking out on issues of concern to young people for many years. In this time, I’ve probably seen (and worn) all the labels that several of the previous posts have attributed to the 2020 Youth Summit participants.
After nine years of hearing the same misconceptions about young people who get involved and speak out, the negativity directed at you for simply trying to do something positive still smarts.
But the way in which the young people over that weekend worked towards our common goal of making Australia a better place in 2020 has certainly reminded me why Australia should be optimistic about its future. And why the pain caused by such negativity is still worth fighting to make better the future we all share.
Rey Reodica
Ringo: When you said, "I’ve been to band camps that came up with better ideas than these ones" it may have been a throw away line, but if you’re really interested about putting original ideas forward, then let’s see what you (or your fellow band members) have come up with?
I don’t just say this to be defensive, but in the interest of adding to the debate in a constructive way, it would be good for you to put your money where your mouth is before the weekend.
If your idea is as inspired as you think it is, Owen, Sid or whoever might even take it to the main Summit.
At the moment, all we have are your allusions to the Norwegian model, which on the face of it is neither original, nor inspired.
These Young People are to be applauded for their well-intentioned participation in the Australia 2020 Summit but are unfortunately talking horribly like the Older People.
It’s not their fault - they live in a Western Murdochracy in which the truth is what the lying, "politically correct" racist, holocaust-complicit, holocaust-ignoriing Powerful permit it to be.
Just like the ordinary Germans in 1945 who claimed "we didn’t know" the Holocaust was happening, so ordinary Australians - including these terrific Young Australians - are treated like mushrooms (kept in the dark and fed manure).
According to the American Association for Advancement of Science (the world’s biggest general scientific organization) the three major threats facing the world are nuclear weapons, global warming and poverty (for my detailed course on the subject see: http://rationalriskmanagement.blogspot.com/ ).
Of course "we live in the best country on earth etc etc" but that does not absolve us of our world-leading complicity in these threats in cahoots with the world’s number one threat in all these areas, the racist, war criminal, climate criminal US that actively or passively murders 1,000 Asian infants every day in its current Asian Wars (according to UNICEF statistics, only a few mouse clicks away for the IT-savvy Young Ones: http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/index.html ) .
These terrific Young Australians would be hurt and bewildered to know that a highly-published Australian scholar has made a formal complaint to the International Criminal Court over ONGOING Australian involvement in Aboriginal Genocide (9,000 avoidable deaths [excess deaths] annually, 90,000 excess deaths over the last 11 years); Iraqi Genocide (about 2 million post-invasion excess deaths, 4.5 million refugees); Afghan Genocide (3-6 million post-invasion excess deaths, 4 million refugees); and Climate Genocide (16 million avoidable deaths annually; increasingly biofuel-, climate change- , oil wars - and global market -impacted; Australia is per capita one of the worst CO2 polluters) (see: http://climateemergency.blogspot.com/ ).
I sent 255 Ideas covering all 10 topics to the Australia 2020 that I edited down to about 200 in the final formal submission (see: http://australia2020ideas.blogspot.com/ ) . Of acute interest to the Young Ones would surely have been: 1.6. Student HECS fees should be abolished – tertiary education should be FREE; 7.1. Indigenous health funding should be urgently doubled as recommended 4 years ago by medical experts to meet peculiar needs and to stop the horrendous Aboriginal Genocide (9,000 excess deaths annually out of 0.5 million); 10.1. Security comes from being NICE to people and doing business with them – Australia should cease diplomatic, legislative and military support for UK, US and Israeli state terrorism (Indigenous excess deaths in post-1950 US Asian wars now total 24 million); and 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 (as prescribed by top US climate scientist Dr James Hansen of NASA).
With only a couple of days to go to the Summit, these Young People’s ideas are the first I’ve seen - the promised Web publication this week of all the submissions has not yet happened (as of Wednesday April 16, 8 am).
Peace is the only way but Silence kills and Silence is complicity.
"Unfortunately the proposals are unoriginal and uninspired. Sorry, that’s all there is to it. Drop the ‘why are you being horrible to us?’ line and come up with something new."
I was in the Climate Change and Sustainability group, our idea was called the ‘Australian Sustainability Challenge’. The basic idea is a competition between local governments to see which shire could have the best improvement in a range of areas such as water usage, electricity usage, carbon emission and native revegetation and regeneration. The shire with the best percentage increase would be awarded a considerable grant.
Unoriginal and uninspired? I think not. It’s simple, yet it will encourage the fight against Climate Change nationally, at a local level. It has the possibility of drawing in each and every household, school and company. The fight against Climate Change isn’t just about forcing governments or international bodies to acknowledge that it is actually happening and writing complex legislation- we need action at all levels. I truly believe that climate change is the most serious threat we face as a global community, and we all need to rally against it. I honestly think our plan for an ‘Australian Sustainability Challenge’ will continue the efforts on a local scale.
Thinking globally but acting locally, if ever I saw it…
To all the delegates- we know the efforts, hours and hard work we put in, and the quality of all that was said and decided on. I am so proud and honoured to have been a part.
Jessie Price, QLD
2020 Youth Summit Delegate
I see there are only 4 small business people selected for the grown ups summit. Small businesses employ a quarter of the workforce but Rudd doesn’t care. I see that the unions are well represented.
this is hilarious. young people should be illegal
Jessie, Thanks for your comment.
Is the ASC based on the Tidy Town contest? Maybe that program could be adapted and revised…. who do you propose manages the challenge? There are something like 700 local councils in Australia. Would there be strict parameters for what the successful councils spend the grant on? The example of a wind farm is a good one but health care facilities and a public swimming pool seem a little at odds with the project goals.
State and fed grants already exist which councils draw on for sustainable projects and infrastructure. I don’t see how this is any different and it certainly doesn’t appear simple (which from the comments above sounds like the running theme of the weekend).
Reyzer, I never claimed to have a better idea. I’m contesting the ideas put forward last weekend at a summit sponsored by the fed government.
In that context asking me if I have a better idea is rather lame. Well here goes. Some of my ideas include banning cats & dogs, making tax returns non-compulsory, making recycled paper compulsory for government agencies, immediately removing non-energy efficient light bulbs from sale, privatising Australia Post and a Royal Commission into the inflated prize of cinnamon donuts. (Sorry you asked, aren’t you?)
sheamus, I’m not exactly sure what you are trying to say. I’m 22, so your comment makes me sad you can’t make better use of the fantastic grammatical structure available using the English language : “ringo may you just look around you, the youth of this nation have fully shut you down, and it was all done so because we all believe that we wont just go away and that our ideas are crap” Seriously, what are you talking about? Is that from babel fish?
Revilo, your suggestions are almost as idiotic as they are patronising.
I was part of the action group for the ASC, where we got together to flesh out the practical details of the project. I can tell you now that we did in fact consider many of the potential problems you’re picking up.
We decided that this project would be different from the Tidy Towns comp in a couple of key ways, first of which is that TT is generally focussed on regional centres. We want this to be a nationwide comp, that both metro and rural can compete in. That brought up questions about equality of resources between the two, so we have considered establishing different catagories.
Second, TT has often been criticised for handing out prizes to almost everyone who participates, so we’d want a real element of competition for the ASC. There might be one prize per state, and then those finalists could compete for the national prize.
The prizes would probably be based on the improvement of a town’s sustainability (ie. reduction in water/electricity consumption, recycling programs, increase in use of public transport), and perhaps also for innovation in sustainability projects.
Prizes would be monetary. There may be issues with handing out untied grants, but if a town has worked towards becoming sustainable to such an extent that they have won the comp, there’s not much chance of the community letting their council waste the money or spend it on projects that are not environmentally friendly.
Depending on what the organisers of TT think, the two competitions may or may not be combined. If the ASC is an independant project, a panel of judges would probably be established.
Re: existing funding, this project is unique in that competition is particularly effective in mobilising people to achieve. I think that at the moment a lot of people feel unsure about how they can contribute to reducing their impact on the environment. The ASC will do that, and build bettter communities by bringing people together in the process.
Does this answer some of your questions? Please keep in mind that we only had two days to look at this idea along with many, many more, and we did our best to give every one of those fair consideration.
I apoligise if this all seems a bit complicated, but it seems that the ideas that have come out of the summit are either criticsed for not being thought through well enough, or being too complex. What kind of standards are we supposed to be living up to here? All the delegates (myself included) have a shared interest in making a positive contribution to Australia, and we tried our hardest to do that last weekend.
I’m not saying that the ideas should not be critiqued - its only through robust discussion that we’ll make progress - I just hope that people are taking as much notice of the positive aspects as well as the negative aspects of the summit.
Cheers
I was part of the action group for the ASC, where we got together to flesh out the practical details of the project. I can tell you now that we did in fact consider many of the potential problems you’re picking up.
We decided that this project would be different from the Tidy Towns comp in a couple of key ways, first of which is that TT is generally focussed on regional centres. We want this to be a nationwide comp, that both metro and rural can compete in. That brought up questions about equality of resources between the two, so we have considered establishing different catagories.
Second, TT has often been criticised for handing out prizes to almost everyone who participates, so we’d want a real element of competition for the ASC. There might be one prize per state, and then those finalists could compete for the national prize.
The prizes would probably be based on the improvement of a town’s sustainability (ie. reduction in water/electricity consumption, recycling programs, increase in use of public transport), and perhaps also for innovation in sustainability projects.
Prizes would be monetary. There may be issues with handing out untied grants, but if a town has worked towards becoming sustainable to such an extent that they have won the comp, there’s not much chance of the community letting their council waste the money or spend it on projects that are not environmentally friendly.
Depending on what the organisers of TT think, the two competitions may or may not be combined. If the ASC is an independant project, a panel of judges would probably be established.
Re: existing funding, this project is unique in that competition is particularly effective in mobilising people to achieve. I think that at the moment a lot of people feel unsure about how they can contribute to reducing their impact on the environment. The ASC will do that, and build bettter communities by bringing people together in the process.
Does this answer some of your questions? Please keep in mind that we only had two days to look at this idea along with many, many more, and we did our best to give every one of those fair consideration.
I apoligise if this all seems a bit complicated, but it seems that the ideas that have come out of the summit are either criticsed for not being thought through well enough, or being too complex. What kind of standards are we supposed to be living up to here? All the delegates (myself included) have a shared interest in making a positive contribution to Australia, and we tried our hardest to do that last weekend.
I’m not saying that the ideas should not be critiqued - its only through robust discussion that we’ll make progress - I just hope that people are taking as much notice of the positive aspects as well as the negative aspects of the summit.
Cheers
sorry for the double post! not intentional
Most disappointing and thoroughly puerile.
I am 90% with Revilo in response to this disorganised "Shopping List". If these are Youth’s priorities, Heaven help us!
We must raise the voting age to 30 years of age so that this generation can get an education.
How are they going to contribute to the Public Purse that they are so eager to draw on?
"These people came together in Canberra, not because they knew how to write a good application but because they have already achieved more than the average Australian will in their whole lives."
Self praise is no recommendation! Must be another Elitist.
Clearly an over-representation of Fiction Writers ?
Hi Ringo,
I’m not sorry I asked you to put forward your ideas. This whole Youth 2020 process was about giving space for ideas to be raised and developed, and opportunities to do more of this with more people should be applauded.
Now that you’ve suggested non-compulsory tax returns and privatising Australia Post (amongst others) I’d be interested to know how you see this working? Like I said, you might consider it "lame" but I’m also interested in being constructive and seeing what such an opinionated person might bring to the table.
I may not like your style, tone, cynicism and stereotyping, but I still look forward to your next post.
And we both agree that revilo’s post was patronising and idiotic, so it’s not like we disagree on everything.
Rey Reodica
I applaud the younger generation for this valuable contribution to our nation.
It will be best served if placed in a time capsule with a delayed release until such time as deemed appropriate. Perhaps some sort of pod contained in a frozen state could be enabled to allow such enthusiast young achievers to cultivate & mature before a scheduled release back into our society.
In response to Desgriffin’s comment of a few days ago: ‘If the apology was important then a treaty, in some form, is worth considering also. We have passed the stage of that deceitful "practical reconciliation" phase’, can you please put me in the deceitful column ?
No, we haven’t got past the practical reconciliation phase - we haven’t moved beyond the piss-weak "symbolic reconciliation" phase yet, and there is so much to do before any of us can lift up our heads and prattle on about having achieved reconciliation. So I’m happy to be deceitful and ‘practical’ till the cows come home, in terms of aiming for a target of fifty thousand Indigenous university graduates by 2020, as a step towards genuine ‘practical’ self-determination.
And I’ll think about ‘symbolic reconciliation’ in a few decades’ time when Indigenous people can get together, without pseudo-Left middle-class minders, and agree AMONGST THEMSELVES that ‘practical’ reconciliation has been achieved. Not before. THAT would be genuine self-determination, not being sweetly dictated to by a bunch of middle-class white ‘symbolists’.
Joe Lane
Hi Rey
Yes it is nice to see we agree on something.
Non-compulsory tax returns is relatively easy. If you’re a PAYG employee, the ATO already knows how much tax has been taken out of your pay and therefore knows your total salary and tax collected over the financial year. Thus the refund (if there is one) can be calculated without a return. If you owe the ATO, they’re likely to contact yo anyway. If an employee wants to claim additional expenses or costs, then they can voluntarily lodge a return to be processed.
It would reduce ATO resources processing returns and less accountants working on $80 returns. We’d be better of with all those accountants assisting ASIC and the ASX which are having so many difficulties at the moment with companies that continue trading, when they shouldn’t be.
Privatising Aust Post would be contentious but I think it is an institution which needs to be dismantled. Private freight companies are more efficient and I know people get sentimental and go on and on about the importance of government owned services like this but they aren’t usually the same people hwo actually use the service on a regular basis.
Many post offices are already run as franchises, it’s not such a great leap to privatising.
What did you think of the grown-ups summit?
Hi Ringo,
Thanks for your response.
Completely agree about tax returns, although you couldn’t take into account any tax deductions, so you couldn’t automate. But making it non-compulsory when the ATO owes you would be better (although they don’t really chase you and get angry for not taking your money off them)…
As for the "grown-ups" summit, it was pretty obvious that it was even more rushed than the Youth Summit….. I think some of the ideas were good and it definitely gave them a platform to enter into the public consciousness.
Your thoughts?
(Come to think of it, you’ve probably posted them somewhere else…. I think I’ll have a look elsewhere… but feel free to restate them here)
What Australia needs most desperately is wisdom, following three decades of lobby-driven policy implementations, and illicit executive decision-making that has culminated in the demise of egalitarian prosperity and democracy.
If you want bright new ideas, youth is an excellent starting point; but wisdom? Hardly.
This age-old reality surfaced in the form of suggestions that a treaty be imposed on all Australians; entirely ignoring our most disastrous failure of government… the elimination of consensus democracy in Australia.
A treaty is politics only. It is not evidence-based and empowering community development that places family in control of family, and community in control of that community’s future. This has been the fundamental failure of Aboriginal affairs since 1979. Forget the politicians and lobbyists and listen to the people in the communities who speak out. And they are speaking out but the chattering classes can’t hear them.
One of the susceptibilities of youth is the A+B=C simplicity of logic that, with maturity, acknowledges rolling impacts that so often precipitate even greater problems that the original measure was intended to ameliorate.
What is needed is an unstreamed Australian community in which youth and all other age-groups conjointly consider all the relevant information and identify a remedial policy. This scenario respects and validates our respective strengths and weaknesses; and we all have these. We used to have this; it was called democracy.
Culling 1000 celebrities in one corner, and isolating a 100 kids in another, is the worst of all worlds; but it makes excellent sense if divide and rule is your intent.
So, kids, don’t feel you have been rejected by the older generation. You just got slapped by very understandable inarticulate anger and indignation as people who have devoted much of their lives to understanding and working with social problems, see this blithely dismissed by people to whom the real world is as yet barely glimpsed.
In other words, young and old, we were conned and manipulated by glib politicians.
Meanwhile, some corrections are urgent. If the reports are accurate, the youthful non sequiturs were myriad:
Giving 16 year olds the vote? What conceivable comprehension of social management does any 16 year old have? The least mature will cry ‘everything’ while the most mature will admit ‘none’. There is no correlation between having a job and going to war, and having the knowledge and perspective to contribute to government policy. This is what voting is about; not that we ever get the opportunity to vote on policy.
Research into agricultural technologies? Who do you want to help? Giant foreign water-sucking NPK-polluting agri-business? Because that is who will benefit unless we simultaneously restore tariffs, which will enable family farmers to profitably develop permaculture; and not be bankrupted by imported, subsidised toxic food products from third world countries. And none of these foreign products benefit third world farmers. These people have been driven into unrepayable debt and forced to work in quasi-slavery for the very foreign corporations that earlier undermined their products with cheap subsidised imports.
Solutions in isolation may sound good, but these can create nightmares once implemented.
Young people should not take prolonged offence at the inevitable reaction to their delivered pearls of wisdom. We all remember that painful embarrassment, and the absolute certainty we were right. We were not.
Out in the unfunded community there are hundreds of Australians, young and old, who recognise your strengths and are working steadily towards a permanent forum for all Australians, and with a dedicated conduit for youth.
This will vastly outperform Hollywood-style talkfests for appointed representatives, and it is a development only a couple of months away.
Considering the comment above, I’m wondering how everyone would envision the ideal policy-building summit. How would you select the delegates? Would people be nominated by their communities to attend? Would individuals submit their ideas online/by post? Would there even be a summit?
Personally, I think its great that this government has gone to the people to get some ideas and feedback on policy because it engages the community in government processes. It also gives individuals greater access to government than they would normally have when up against powerful lobby groups. However, because there can only be a limited number of delegates or ideas submitted, does this detract from your idea of democracy?