I waited for my invitation to the "Australia 2020 Summit" but it never came. I think someone spread the malicious rumour that I didn't vote for Labor in the last election and that I think Kevin Rudd is a peanut. And I think I know who started that story.
Anyway the 1002 'brightest minds in Australia' are getting together to help Australia 'think through' its future. I don't think that's a bad idea - it can't do any harm. Politicians definitely don't have a monopoly on knowledge and good ideas may surface.
It certainly has the effect of Labor cultivating an even greater attachment to intellectual elites and posers. That might generate a bit of much-needed internal party destruction among the comrades.
On the lighter side Cate Blanchett will be there in her jodphurs - she was the star at a pre-meeting photo session. Kevin Rudd and Glyn Davis will chair sessions and there will be lots of advertising types both with and without ponytails. Draped in her possum-fur coat Matilda House-Williams has already welcomed delegates on behalf of the traditional aboriginal land-owners. (I am tiring of the latter nonsense - we did it last night at a degree awarding ceremony!)
Anyway I will watch and listen and do my best to dispell cynicism - I don't want to get caught up in what Andrew Leigh calls 'sportsplay journalism'. Be positive (=don't be negative?), say nice things about everyone and smile. If you look hard at my photo logo to the right you can see that my grin has strengthened and in my eyes you can see a more enlightened, tolerant being.
Update. My spirit of tolerance and goodwill has waned.
Star attraction Cate Blanchett has praised the Government for putting creativity to the fore by forging links with the arts. While she stole the limelight her co-star Hugh Jackman made the scene too by urging expatriate artists to come home to be part of the emerging Australian paradise. Aging artists should teach and mentor said Foot-in-his-mouth Garrett to help stimulate Australian kulture. Australian content should be restored in the media, 1% of public funding should be allocated to the arts (oink, oink), a HECS scheme should be created for the emerging class of creative talent and politicians should be forced to attend cultural events declared these elitist porkers.
They might just get their wish list too judging by the sheer insanity of some other proposals – a doctor told the conference that all drugs should be legalised to ‘give drug addicts choices’ and to reduce the prison population.
Like Kevin Rudd himself – Summit 2020 is a show about nothing.
Saturday, April 19, 2008
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8 comments:
"I didn't vote for Labor in the last election and that I think Kevin Rudd is a peanut."
Harry, that's true of a lot of people who did get invited.
So there must have been another reason why you didn't.
Since it's three years to the next election, you might want to relax a bit for the next year or two (or work on something unrelated..).
There might be some good news for you -- at least in NSW, it looks like Iemma and Frank Sartor are really trying to work out how to get rid of themselves (its hard for me to think of better ways). You should tell your reallies to watch out for their houses, and you never know your luck, maybe Bracks will try to do the same.
Conrad,
I am perfectly relaxed so no problems on that front. But I will still make whatever comments I wish on the Labor Party as well as doing other things.
Conrad, mate, try to keep up. Bracks is long gone from politics.
I agree with you about NSW though. Sartor appears to have gone all anarchist (Property is theft! Hence it's just fine the for the state to steal it back.)
HC, I don't mind the comments -- they were just starting to appear with every post, and I was just wondering why. I'm sure the current invincible look of Kruddy will start getting the first few cracks at budget time. I imagine the great ideas fest will haunt him in a few years too when it turns out his proposals are impossible to implement, as will occur with the solutions to all the big problems with no easy or non-controversial short term solutions (childcare, Aboriginals, education and training, housing, tax etc.). I think the second of those has almost already been forgotten and left in the too-hard basket.
You're right Spiros, I'd forgotten, it looks like Labor has become a bunch nameless non-entities like the Liberals.
Housing for all, free quality medical care, quality state education, intergration of infrastructure, economic transperancy and access for the poor, justice reform...and on and on. These are old problems with recoated solutions. Successive generations have been duped by successive governments and industries to believe that somehow they have resolved them. But here we are today, still trying to 'fix the fence'. I can tolerate Rudd, I can tolerate this 2020 summit if it yields one solution to fix our nations problems. So far, the wisest and anointed amongst us have come up with re-igniting the republic issue, improving the Arts and installing broadband nationally. This is yet another coat of paint.
I think that the solutions are self-evident and are common sense based. It simply requires an honest and fair leader. A leader that makes the families of Australia the priority and refuses to make the dollar the bottom line.
Government must represent the people, it doesn't...so let's fix it. Its a fundamental starting point. I am shocked that people quietly and powerlessly allow governmental politics to stunted and deprive its own citizens. Bracks, Lemma, and a host of others have fiddled with government and our future at our expense and we have become so blase and tolerant of them. Perhaps the best idea for Australia is a revolution, not of ideas but of intolerance toward poor governance.
I don't know if more than half the people that I know who were invited were invited without filling in "a please invite me" application form that you obviously didn't know about.
Harry Clarke...the paper mache of paper politics and the pulse of the people. You make me sick. Arghh! You offer no response. Wanker. Replace your picture with something more appropriate like a mochaccino or soy-latte.
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