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By Divonne Holmes à Court
We're not doing enough to equip parents with the best information to make parenting a little easier and a little less stressful.
One of the most significant events of Kevin Rudd's term in office so far has been the recent 2020 Summit in Canberra. Over a busy two days, hundreds of people spent time together to discuss the best ideas and solutions for our country's future. Some ideas were smarter than others, but one of the most interesting themes to emerge was around prevention. We're all aware that acting now helps avoiding problems later - the 2020 summit discussed that investing in prevention today has a much better long term payoff than waiting for the problem to occur down the line and then trying to cure it.
But looking ahead to the future is hard and planning for it can be even harder. I only started thinking about the future when I became a parent for the first time.
Australia needs a permanent, highly visible and accessible repository for ideas.
In 1988 I wrote to the then Minister for Science, Barry Jones and advocated the concept of a centralised ideas database. I envisaged a system where members of the public could submit ideas for inventions, models for governance, infrastructure improvements, etc. via phone, fax, mail or even the newfangled "email".
My envisaged model was a system administered by universities who were probably the only bodies at that time with enough computing power to handle the influx of data. Since then, of course, there have been massive advances in internet technologies making such a system not only feasible but, I believe, imperative. It is sad to contemplate that there have doubtless been many creative ideas formulated by ordinary people which have withered and died for want of an avenue for expression.
Summits such as this should be extended beyond Australian shores to include our near neighbours, says Ben McDevitt.
I felt honoured to be part of the 2020 Summit in Canberra. The opportunity to share ideas with such a diverse array of people from all walks of life on critical issues affecting our nation was fantastic. My only regret is that the time we had to actually put ideas onto the table was very limited and the opportunity to actually explore those ideas in a meaningful way was virtually non-existent.
I think the organisers and facilitators did a great job under considerable pressure to identify key ideas emerging from each of the streams in the limited time available and I was pleasantly surprised at the wrap up session on the second day that some really innovative ideas had been generated. Prior to attending the summit I held the view that the best we could hope for was to create opportunities for further discussion and I sense that will occur.
The twelve years from now to 2020 will be constrained by demographic imperatives, economic realities, demands of sustainability, Asian development and climate change. Within those constraints we will have choices - how wisely can we make them, asks Prof Stephen Leeder.
In proposing a national health strategy, major points of agreement emerged quickly among the hundred delegates in the Health Strategy Stream. The 17 years less life expectancy experienced by Indigenous Australians was unacceptable, and to ensure more equitable care for people in remote socio-economically disadvantaged Australia was urgent. A more energetic approach to IT for a portable, personal medical record was proposed, essential for the decades of care for people with long-term continuing health problems such as emphysema. The continuing value of research was acknowledged.
Chronic illness scares everyone, especially mental problems, and better linked up care is critical between public and private, health workforce and Commonwealth and States.
The Summit was unquestionably a success in engaging the imagination, but many questions have been left unanswered, writes Narelle Kennedy.
The Australia 2020 summit with its catch cry of ‘Thinking Big' certainly had the sense of being an historic occasion.
Led by the Prime Minster Kevin Rudd, it was a new collaboration, opening up the corridors of power to captains of industry, indigenous leaders, community activists, quiet achievers from rural communities, celebrities, youth, world class scholars, past and present political leaders and today's working journalists and politicians.
The tone was about wider dialogue and fresh ideas - not through oratory and speechmaking, but by getting down to business with new solutions to the big issues affecting Australia.
Working side by side and sharing the task, there was a sense of collegiality, passionate and robust questioning and distilling the essence of the new ideas that emerged and testing them. Not always harmoniously, and with many questions still left unanswered.
The end products from each of the ten streams were pulled together, using typical processes of our management consultant facilitators, and summarised in an interim report presented to the Prime Minister. The full report - with more nuanced ideas and background thinking - is still to come.
Small business will provide the majority of new jobs and will be the core innovators in the next decade, says Russell Yardley.
Having just had my knee operated on last week I spent a good deal of my weekend looking in at the summit on ABC2. It was clearly a wonderful exchange of ideas amongst a well informed and diverse group of people.
The medical book (as in facebook) idea to share medical information with those who you choose was a clever twist on a proven idea that could solve the problem of the universal medical record that is consuming millions of dollars around the world.
It was not so much an event to create new ideas (they don't seem to come when requested) but rather a powerful way to sift and sort the best ideas to help create a longer term agenda. I think this was acheived and will prove a substantial challenge for the Liberal Party in the coming few years.
Nelson did hit on the obvious weakness in the selection of summitteers. In the entire broadcast I did not hear one single speaker raise issues impacting small business. The Productivity stream often spoke of business issues and on business but it was either educators, researchers or big business and they were as was specifically identified in their idea only thinking of the "top 100" businesses in Australia!
