Another day, another lobbyist for one specific community sector fails to understand what the Australia 2020 Summit means. This time it’s Professor Warren Hogan whingeing that “the ageing population” isn’t mentioned enough.
As reported in that august journal Australian Ageing Agenda, Hogan reckons the “omission” of aged care from the Summit agenda is “inexplicable”.
“An immediate worry with the new Government comes from the failure to address any issues in aged care for the 2020 summit,” he said.
No, Professor Hogan, what’s really “inexplicable” are:
- Why you haven’t bothered looking at the list of topics at the Summit website, which clearly says: “Health — a long-term national health strategy — including the challenges of preventative health, workforce planning and the ageing population.” [my emphasis]
- How you reckon the Summit fails to address this issue when it hasn’t even happened yet.
I’m getting pretty goddam sick of the narrow-mindedness and short-term thinking shown by so many of the commentators so far.
The Summit is organised thematically, people — things like infrastructure, the economy, our place in the world and so on. Each community sector is affected by and has input into all of these themes.
So, Professor Hogan, once we all say, “Gosh, the population is ageing,” as if every planner hasn’t already been saying that for a decade or two, we notice that this affects how we’ll have to structure health care, housing, transport, taxation — wow, just about everything. And maybe our 1000 “best and brightest” can take that on board and then move on to the next step, which is working on the future vision.
Professor Hogan, are you really so blinkered that you can’t see how “the ageing population” fits into the Summit unless it’s spelt out for you? Or, as Robert Merkel reports in Lavartus Prodeo today, is it just that every medical specialty in town is trying to drum up publicity because we’re renegotiating the federal-state health funding agreement?
For the 20 million people not invited to the Australia 2020 Summit, the online community created a wiki so people across Australia could post, discuss, and vote on the best ideas for the country. It’s totally a grassroots effort. It’s free, can be anonymous, and isn’t being sponsored by any political party, business, union, or special interests. It’s just people who want to encourage an online national brainstorming session.
The site is at http://ozideas.wetpaint.com. There are pages for over 20 different issues and even an online petition to get the best ideas heard at the actual Summit.
The more people know about it, the more ideas are submitted, and the better the discussion. It’s a great way for everyone to participate in the summit.
Jim
Wiki Creator
@Jim: Now that you’ve posted the link twice yourself, and I’ve linked to your website too, I reckon any more comments which just link back to your site without any value-added commentary or participation in the conversation here will count as spam and all of your comments will be deleted immediately. I’ll also tag your comments as spam in the Akismet spam database.